#59 What Do I Obey in the New Testament Now That I Follow Jesus + Dr. Richard Averbeck

Raise your hand if you've ever asked the question, why do I feel like I'm either legalistic in my faith or lawless?

Why did Jesus sit with Gentiles if God told Israel to stay separate? God wanted to separate the

Jewish people from the nations around about him. Now, in the New Testament, what happens is when

Christ comes, he breaks down the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. How did they respond to a law that was obedient to God and now a law that loves

God, loves others? Was that just like mind blowing to them to hear? They knew but didn't understand.

So which ones do I obey? Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. This is Biblically Speaking and I'm your host,

Cassian Blino. I want everybody to raise your hand if you've ever asked the question, why do

I feel like I'm either legalistic in my faith or lawless? Or maybe do I need to keep the Sabbath or do

I need to eat clean to be holy? Or why did Jesus sit with Gentiles if God told Israel to stay separate?

All of these are very common questions that I personally and probably a few other Christians have faced when trying to live a purest

Biblical life. So if we're going to Biblically Speak today, I want to be as accurate as possible.

Today, I'm going to sit with this question at the center of Christian life. What do we do with the law now that we follow

Jesus? And this isn't just theoretically, but this is how we live, how we love and how we represent him within the modern world of 2025.

So my guest today is Dr. Richard Averbeck, a scholar who has spent his career helping people understand the ancient world behind the

Bible. Just so you guys know that he is a qualified credentialed and expert on this topic.

A little bit of your credentials are, you have a PhD from the Annenberg Research Institute. You have taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, at Grace Theological Seminary, and at TEDS, where you directed the doctoral program in theology.

You have a lot of work focusing on the Torah, and you're the author of The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church. Welcome to the show today.

I'm so glad that you're here, Dr. Averbeck. Thank you for the invitation. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, this is going to be a really amazing conversation, just because we have discussed in the past, if you haven't heard that episode with Dr.

James Hedlicek, but that was focusing on why and how we understand the different things that were listed in the

Old Testament, like the feasts and the festivals, and it's a wonderful episode. But today, I want to ask, why do

I, a Christian in 2025 who follows Jesus, why do I have to follow the Torah?

Well, the reason is that Jesus has taught us that we follow the

Torah. In fact, he followed the Torah, and he wants us to follow him in that, in ways that correspond to the nature of the new covenant.

The law is given to us within the old Mosaic covenant, but then the new covenant passage in Jeremiah 31 talks about how that law is written on the heart of the new covenant believer.

So the question is, how does that work? What is that about? And a big part of what the

New Testament is doing, what Jesus does, and Paul, is help us to understand what that means to have this law that was given so long ago written on the heart of the new covenant believer.

So what would you say is the main difference between the old law and the new law, or the old covenant and the new covenant? The law is the old law, you know, the

Old Testament law in Exodus 20 through Deuteronomy, okay? That's the law.

But then we have the new covenant, that's in the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant. In the new covenant, we have that same law, it says in Jeremiah 31, written on the heart of the believer.

And then that's the new covenant that Jesus initiated in his death, burial, and resurrection. So we live in the light of that law that was given to be written on our heart in the new covenant world.

And the new covenant is that we serve Jesus now, whereas the old covenant is we serve God. Well, the old covenant was given by the

Lord, Yahweh, in the Old Testament. And Jesus is, as we talk about the Trinity, the

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Jesus is the incarnate God, okay, who came to bring salvation to us who are in so desperate need of it.

And that is really what it's all about. Then the Old Testament law, the Holy Spirit was the one who inspired the writing of the

Old Testament law. And he's the same one who's working in us to bring that law to bear in ways that correspond to living for Christ.

You know, I get so caught up in, you know, the things that I should and shouldn't obey from the Old Testament, because it feels like a couple of them are echoed by Jesus, you know, just like idolatry and murder and even homosexuality.

But then within Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Exodus, you know, within this old law, we see things like mixing fabrics or eating bacon.

So which ones do I obey? One of the things that I think is confusing to people is that the old covenant, the

Mosaic covenant given back in the 14th BC, okay, a long time ago, okay, over 3000 years ago, was meant to guide ancient

Israel. He brought them out of Egypt, delivered them from slavery. So he redeemed them, brought them out of Egypt.

And then he gave them this law to help them know how to live as a redeemed community in that ancient

Near Eastern world that they lived in. So it has some things that help us to understand how they should live in their world, okay?

The question then is how does that come through into the new covenant world, you know, a millennium later, over a millennium later.

And so it's a big part of this is understanding the law and how it worked in the

Old Testament context for ancient Israel. And then how the New Testament, and you gotta understand that first.

Otherwise, you're not gonna understand well what's going on in the New Testament in terms of how it brings it across.

And that's one of the big problems. A lot of people talk about the law, but they've never really studied it.

And they don't understand it the way the New Testament writers did. And therefore, there's a misunderstanding of what they're saying about the law.

Interesting. So what is some of the context that we miss, especially today? We're not even New Testament writers.

We're millennia later that we miss when we look at verses like homosexuality, fabrics, bacon, you know, obviously they played a role.

They had a reason for saying that then. That doesn't apply today for some of them. But why were they even laws back then?

What were some of the contextual reasonings? Well, one of the main reasons, and this is actually expressed in the biblical text, is that God wanted to separate the

Jewish people who he wanted to be a holy people from the nations round about him that were so corrupt, round about them that might corrupt them.

The paganistic communities. So the result is that when he gave the law, he gave some things that would separate them from those people.

And one of those things was, for example, the clean and unclean animal regulations about what you can eat and what you can't eat.

If they have regulations that separate them from those people around them, then they can't eat with them, do covenant with them, and so on and so forth.

It has an effect of separating them from the corruption of those people around them.

Leviticus 20 actually talks explicitly about this and tells us, you know, don't offer your children to Molech, don't do this, don't do that, so on and so forth, because that's what was going on in the land that they were taking over.

And so he didn't want them to do those things. So what he said at the end of the chapter in Leviticus 20 is, therefore, don't eat clean and unclean animals, which means you can't eat with them, which means you can't have relationship with them in that historical context.

So a lot of those regulations were given specifically to separate the Jew from the

Gentiles around them. Now, in the New Testament, what happens is when Christ comes as the new covenant incarnate

Son of God, what happens is that he breaks down the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile so that we have a joint church, a unified church made up of Jew and Gentile together.

Well, that means then you can't use the animal food regulations to keep Jew and Gentile separate in the church.

And this became a big problem in the early church and it shows up in several places. In fact, in Galatians chapter two,

Paul actually blew up in Peter's face over him separating because of animal regulations, in terms of eating with the

Gentiles, because now he's creating two different churches. And so this becomes something that really gets worked out through the

New Testament context. I mean, it makes sense when you say it, but let me just break it down because I feel like us today, we have such a bad habit of saying, well, the

Old Testament said it was this way, so we're gonna apply it to today's. And we're going to forget that that time period was a period of separating a chosen group of people from the pagan societies around it.

And that's why we're gonna create these laws that separate them from people that do eat pork, people that are okay with blood sacrifices, people that do drink blood, longer gonna associate with them.

Just on that point, did God make those rules with any like hygienic or health basis for the reasons or was it simply just to separate?

It did not have to do with hygiene. For example, there's poisonous plants, but there's no such thing as a unclean plant in the

Bible. So what we have here is a situation where another foundational feature that needs to be understood is why is this animal clean, this one unclean?

If you look at Leviticus chapter 11, where all of this is found, what you find is that we're not supposed to eat blood, okay?

According to way back to Genesis nine, other places in the Bible, not supposed to eat blood. So when it comes to the animals, we're not supposed to eat animals that eat blood either.

Therefore, only pastoral animals are clean animals. Chewing the cud, having the split hoof, that means you're a pastoral type and eat only plants.

So cows don't eat chickens. You know what I mean? Things like this, whereas pigs, for example,

I've seen pigs, I grew up on a farm. I've seen pigs actually eat dead chickens. You know what I mean? It's the kind of thing where there's a split over this issue of not eating blood.

So therefore don't eat animals that eat blood either. That's why the birds are the carry on eating birds.

The scavenger birds are eliminated as food, so on and so forth. So these are part of the foundations of those regulations.

The result though, is that if they live according to those regulations, it just naturally separates them from the people around them too, okay?

So both things are happening at the same time. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. But now you're saying that with the new covenant, with Jesus coming, he wants to now bind those people.

He wants to bring in those that were separated before through circumcision or separated through sin.

So that's people for thousands, for millennia, have been now separating themselves through these different patterns and behaviors of eating certain foods.

They've created so much separation. Jesus now comes and sits with them. He starts doing the opposite of what they've been told.

Are you saying that we should still apply that rule of it's okay to close that separation, to do what other, there's no need to separate ourselves through these behaviors that were listed in the

Old Testament. We don't need those anymore because we wanna bind together Gentile, Jew, all into the kingdom of God.

Yeah, now these are holiness regulations. God is still concerned with holiness in the church too, okay?

But it can't be brought out and developed in the same way if it's gonna separate Jew from Gentile.

So now even in the Old Testament, in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for example, in the law, the law changes because the situation changes, okay?

So for example, when they're around the tabernacle to traveling through the wilderness, they had, if they were gonna eat meat, they had to bring the animal to the tent of meeting, have the blood and the fat put on the altar, okay?

Now what happens in Deuteronomy when they're gonna be spread out in the land? If they wanna eat meat for dinner tonight, they can't travel 20 miles and then travel back 20 miles, that kind of thing.

So what we get is a development in Deuteronomy 12 of this, what they call profane slaughter, which is you can still eat meat, but you treat it as if it's wild game, okay?

As if you've killed a wild animal. You don't have to catch a wild animal and take it to the altar, you know what

I mean? Things like this, it's like hunting. And so when you kill this animal, like any animal, even if you're hunting it, you drain the blood out, pour it on the ground, okay?

You don't eat the blood, okay? And so it gives those regulations for when they're spread out in the land as opposed to all living around the tabernacle while they're traveling through the wilderness.

So that there's actual changes in the law within the law because the situation changes for the people of Israel.

So what are we supposed to do today? What do we abide in today? Because we aren't doing offerings anymore.

We're not doing sacrifices. But are you saying that the things that we see in Leviticus, like wearing mixed fabrics and eating bacon and even homosexuality, we don't need to abide in that separation so it's okay now in the new covenant?

Well, you have to let the New Testament tell us where to go with that. And in fact, sexuality is forbidden in the

New Testament too. Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1

Timothy. There's different places where that is called out as against the way

God designed the way sexuality should work. And this is one of the things that this is based on.

The law was based upon how did God design things? Okay, how did he want things to work?

How did he create it so that it worked the way he wanted it to work? And this is where we get into some of these hot questions today about, say, homosexuality or something.

It's forbidden in the law. Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, okay? Eliminate homosexuality as an option.

But that's followed through on in the New Testament too because it is against the natural way sexuality should happen according to God's creation.

Is it fair to say that the Old Testament has a lot of laws, a lot of things that, you know, having this basis for separation, that's such a beautiful explanation for it, like that reasoning makes sense if it is repeated in the

New Testament because Jesus states it. That is something that we should still obey today. Yes, now it's not just that.

There's a whole pattern of how you follow this through. That's why there's so much study involved in it. But one of the things that is important is some of them are brought across explicitly in the

New Testament. Others are not brought across as explicitly in the New Testament. So we have to think about how would that naturally apply in the new covenant context where the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile is broken down and we wanna have just one church, not two separate churches.

So this is one of the big hot debates in the early church and it got pretty hot, so hot, that in Acts 15, the first Jerusalem council, this was the discussion.

So they had to deal with this directly because they expected the church to be totally

Jewish. They never expected it to include Gentiles and they got surprised. Peter was absolutely overwhelmed by this in Acts 10 when

God brought the sheep in a dream down out of heaven with clean and unclean animals to take and eat. And Peter said,

I would never do that, Lord. So he's having this hard time dealing with this. Well, then he's preaching the gospel to this

Roman core person and what happens is as he's preaching gospel, the

Holy Spirit comes upon him, upon them. He says, well, what happened here? And he says, well, they've received the

Spirit. They need to be baptized in Jesus. But then you go on from Acts 10 to 11 and he has to go back to Jerusalem and try to explain this.

They were really upset with him. He says, you actually went into a house of Gentiles and ate with them? Come on.

Okay, how can you do that? He explains it. They understood God had overridden this, okay?

He had done it in order to create a church that included both Jew and Gentile. So there's, again, there's specific passages that have to be studied to understand what happens when we go from the old to the new in this regard.

Why do you think that this is such a question that we have today? Like just with Christians today, we just don't get this bridge that you've so beautifully spelled out.

Is it just difficult to navigate? Is it open for interpretation? Why do we even still have these questions today?

Well, I think it's because we have these still in the Bible. We still have the law in the

Bible. And as I said earlier, we really don't study it to understand how it was intended to work to begin with.

We tend to talk about the law, but not know what in the world's going on in the law. Okay? And if we understand it, then we can begin to understand why the

New Testament writers are telling us the things they're telling us and why they had such a problem with this in the early church.

It's a natural problem. The Jews were for so long intended to be separate from the

Gentiles to not corrupt the Jews. Well, now we're bringing this together and they're at loss to know what to do with this situation.

And that gets reflected in the New Testament. I see, I see. So it's almost they equally are confused in the

Bible. So we are equally confused today. Yeah, it continues as a confusion. It's one of, some writers have said it's the biggest theological problem in the history of the church.

I don't know about that. The deity of Christ is a big deal. Things like this. But I would say that it is one of the big ones.

It's the first one that really comes up in Acts 15 at the first church council because it was right there in their face and they just didn't know what to do.

But then they took seriously and they realized God had given the Holy Spirit and he wasn't dependent on whether or not somebody was a

Jew or a Gentile. It's whether they came to faith in Christ or not. That overrode everything.

I'm looking at Acts 15 right now. Do you mind just kind of pointing to exactly the verse that you're referencing? Yeah, Acts 15.

Okay, okay, here. They came together in Judea and so on and so forth. And then it says when they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church.

Then in verse five, but some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, in other words, they were believers in Jesus, but they were from the sect of the

Pharisees, the strong Jewish conservatives, okay? They stood up saying it is necessary to circumcise them, the

Gentiles, and to direct them to observe the law of Moses. So that became the immediate debate.

What do we do? Do they have to become Jews or not? In order to be Christians. And the answer that was given was no, they don't.

God has made them Christians by giving them the Holy Spirit. So now we need to deal with how do we manage this thing between Jew and Gentile in the church because there's such a history of division.

And in my opinion, why is circumcision such a big deal? It seems like a very strange thing to be so focused on.

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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. Well, actually, that's given back in Genesis 17 to Abram in the

Abrahamic covenant before the Mosaic covenant. And in that, the reason circumcision is the sign of that covenant is because God had promised a seed and circumcision is at the place of the seed.

And so it's like the sign of the Abrahamic covenant is circumcision, okay?

So it was given as an appropriate place to mark the fact that you're part of the covenant.

Okay, so it's more like a really long -term tradition that people didn't want to give up because it was with Abraham, not

Moses. Well, it's actually still, the Abrahamic covenant continues. These covenants continue.

Abrahamic is followed by the Mosaic. But Galatians chapter three actually talks about this. It tells us that one covenant that come later does not eliminate a previous covenant.

They build as a group, okay? So we go from the Abrahamic to the Mosaic to the

Davidic to the new covenant. And all those keep on coming through in ways that correspond to the nature of the new covenant in the church.

So you're saying, although we don't abide in everything in the old Mosaic covenant, such as like bacon and fabrics, it's still included in the

New Testament because it shows how we got there? Yeah, yeah. And in fact, Galatians three talks about the law is like a pedagogy.

It's a word that refers a tutor that was meant to historically lead them to Christ, okay?

And then the wall of partition was broken down. There's no Jew, there's no Gentile, there's no male, there's no female.

All of this kind of thing is actually stated there that in Christ, we're all one. And that is important to the theology, to the ideas of how we should live.

Now, I should mention that we actually still have priesthood, okay?

The priesthood of believers in the new covenant. So for example, in 1 Peter 2, it talks about us coming in chapter two, verse four, and coming to him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God.

You also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house. We're still a temple as people, okay?

A spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable

God to Jesus Christ. And he goes on and talks and develops this idea that we are what you call believer priests.

Each of us has the Holy Spirit. And this is the basis of the priesthood of the believer, the one who can come boldly to the throne of grace because he's a priest.

And we're all meant to be that now in Christ. So that's why when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, he was making people who the church, okay, actually is a institution that is meant to be the priest, the temple and the priesthood and so on and so forth in this day and age.

Wow, okay. A lot of stuff going on. And I feel like this is just something that no modern

Christian that just goes to church is going to understand. So what is like the best way to navigate this in a modern sense without getting too theological?

Like what if you could just give me advice as just like a new Christian on the best way to obey the law? Well, like, would you recommend

I read the Old Testament? Yes, I'd recommend you read the Old Testament. But then I'd recommend that you follow that because Jesus read the

Old Testament. He taught from the Old Testament. They didn't have the New Testament yet. So he taught from the Old Testament and we can see how he does that.

And he does that, for example, in Matthew 5 talking about, I've not come to destroy the law.

I've come to live it out, okay? Yeah, what does that mean? What it means to live it out, okay?

So he was, he taught us to keep the law, but he taught us how to keep the law.

And he taught us that it's not just about keeping the law, about keeping the law from the heart, written on the heart, okay?

So he develops that. And then he talks about, you know, it said, this is Matthew 5, you're not supposed to murder according to the law, right?

But I tell you, you're not supposed to hate. Where does murder come from? So he's dealing with how the law is to be written on the heart that's why it sounds sometimes like the

New Testament makes it harder. Well, it doesn't, it makes it more intimate to what's going on in your heart.

Same thing with adultery. You're not supposed to commit adultery, but don't do it in your heart either.

And he goes on with that in Matthew 5. Then in Matthew 22, he talks about these two great commandments and all the law hangs on these two great commandments, love

God and love your neighbor. That's what the law was all about from the beginning, okay? It was all about how they should love

God and how they should love their neighbor in ancient Israel. And it comes through in the same way, but corresponding to the nature of the new covenant in Christ, which we are now in.

We're not in the Mosaic covenant anymore, but we have the effects of the Mosaic covenant coming through. We're not in the

Abrahamic covenant anymore, but we have the effects of the Abrahamic covenant coming through. The Davidic covenant comes on through too.

Jesus is our Davidic King. All of these. Now, admittedly, this has been one of the big debates and problems in the church since the beginning of the church,

Acts 15. And so therefore, this is not a problem we only have today.

There've been whole church splits over these discussions, okay? Through the centuries. And what I'm saying is that we have to get back and deal with how the law actually worked in ancient

Israel, and then see how the New Testament brings it across and how it does and does not apply, okay, to the church because we're in the new covenant now.

And what does that mean to have that law written on the heart? Well, it starts with, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And then it says, all the Old Testament law and prophets hangs on these. It's like, these are the hinge on which the law works.

And without, we could see that and that can help us to understand how all of these issues can come across, but we can handle them in such a way that we're loving

God and loving people in the midst of daily life. Yeah, it feels like the law got harder, not easier when

Jesus came about. It feels like the Sermon on the Mount. It's like, don't murder, but don't even think about murdering.

Don't sleep around, but don't even think about sleep around. Don't even like pluck out your eyes if you see a woman. It feels like it's getting a little harder.

What do you mean that it all hangs on Matthew 22 with loving each other? Like how do all of those very difficult laws that Jesus talks about on the

Sermon on the Mount, how are all of those just hinged on the verse from Matthew 22?

Or am I not understanding that correctly? Yeah, that passage in Matthew 22 with the two

Greek commandments, when he's asked, what's the greatest commandment? Jesus says, well, love the Lord your God with all your soul.

Then the second is like it. He refused to just give one, okay? He gave two because they go together.

You can't say you love God if you don't love your neighbor and vice versa. So what's going on is that this is what the law was all about from the start.

Now, a lot of people don't see the law that way. They see it as just a bunch of rules and so on and so forth.

But no, it was guidance from God in ancient Israel to help them live in their world in a way that would keep them holy to God, okay?

That's what is important now in the new covenant world. We have the Holy Spirit within us, okay?

Who's working with us, indwelling us, okay? And so what we need to do is not just clean up the outside, but the inside, okay?

We have to deal with the fact that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit as Ephesians 2 talks about us.

And that means, okay, that means we need to deal with how we think, how we feel about things, our attitudes toward life, our way of considering our background.

All of these things have to be reworked by the work of the Holy Spirit in people.

And Romans 7 and 8 really deals with this. I want to take a minute and say thank you to the recording service that has made this podcast possible,

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. What do you mean? What's in Romans 7 and 8? Well, Romans 7 and 8 is when the

Apostle Paul takes this whole issue on in a very direct and systematic way. And there's really three main things that are going on here.

Are you talking about the whole chapters or is there a specific verse? Well, there's specific things.

So for example, it's quite a passage to work through. It's really detailed and but it's very logical.

Okay. It's a very, you just have to study it. Okay. But as you get into it, he says, for example, in chapter 7 of Romans verse 12, so then the law is holy.

And this is present tense. He's talking about, it's not lost it's holiness. It is holy. The commandment is holy and righteous and good.

So the law is good from Paul's point of view. It's a good thing. Down in verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual, but the problem is with me.

I am a flesh sold into bondage to sin. So the law is good. It's holy. It's a spiritual thing.

Okay. But it can't change the fact that I'm fallen. I'm a flesh and sinful.

How does that happen? Well, he works through the struggle that we have with corruption and sin in our lives and comes then to Romans 8 where he talks about the law is also weak.

So that one thing we have to hang on to is the law is good. The second thing it is that it's weak.

It's good. But no law can change a human heart. Not even God's law. Law does not do that.

It gives us a standard by which to live. But the Holy Spirit can come into the heart in life, the spirit of the person, and transform that heart.

And that's what the Holy Spirit is doing. According to Romans 8, he's giving us this spirit of adoption where we cry out

Abba Father, we get impressed with being adopted by God, the spirit of adoption there.

And Romans 8 verses 15 and 16 talk specifically about this.

And in verse 16, the spirit says that the spirit himself, the Holy Spirit testifies with our human spirit, okay?

The Holy Spirit, the human spirit coming together. The spirit himself testifies with our human spirit that we are children of God.

What does testimony do? Well, the Holy Spirit is testifying within our human spirit that we are children of God in order to convince us, okay?

In order to get us more deeply convinced of that. And the problem in our fallen life, in our fallen heart is that we're not all that convinced.

And so the result is that we need this Holy Spirit to work to keep on convincing us.

And it's really important, I think, to recognize this leads eventually to the end of Romans 8 where it talks about what then shall we say these things in verse 31?

If God is for us, who can be against us? Okay, God has sent his son to die for us. God doesn't do that for insignificant beings.

We're important to him. He created us to be in his image and likeness. And he wants us to know this. So there's like this hymn at the end of Romans 8 to this spirit of adoption.

And you know, nothing can say, yet the last two verses of Romans 8 say this, for I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our

Lord. It's the love of God because we're adopted by God that can overwhelm us so that our heart can change.

We now want to be pleased in God. If I really get convinced of God's love for me in the depths and corners of my inner being, the more

I get convinced, the more there's nothing to do but to just to go love God and people. Nothing else makes sense anymore to me if I'm in that place of this spirit of adoption that the

Holy Spirit is working in my human spirit. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so good. That's so good.

I feel like I'm asking you such superficial questions because at the end of the day, like everything you're talking about is something that I feel like takes time.

It's something that happens over time by repetitive being in the word and spending time with the Lord. It's not so instant.

So for anybody that's, you know, entering into the faith and is brand new and it's like, well, what do I just obey?

You would say that, start with the New Testament because that's where all the current laws are. But then reading the

Old Testament, it gives you a much greater foundation for understanding what the New Testament is getting at.

If you study the law, you know what I mean? It was given. It's scripture. It's given by God.

All scripture is profitable. It says in 2 Timothy 3 .16, even those scriptures, and in fact, that's what that passage is talking about.

The Old Testament scriptures are still profitable. Okay. Important for teaching, instruction, rebuking, and so on, that we might be properly equipped to do the ministry.

So the fact of the matter is that the whole Bible, we need to be whole Bible Christians.

Okay. And that's a lifetime. Okay. It's God intends for us.

It says we're to meditate, you know, Psalm 2. We delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night.

Okay. This is something that needs to occupy us because that's what the Holy Spirit uses to work this in us is the word of God.

And he inspired the writing of it and is working within us to bring it to bear in such a way that we live effectively the way

God wants us to live. So when it comes to being obedient and serving the Lord in this daily aspect, do we obey anything in the

Old Testament or just focus on the New Testament? Well, the fact of the matter is, I think the whole law applies to the

Christian life. The whole law. It's one law. It's not different parts of the law. There's one law that's written on the heart, according to Jeremiah 31.

Okay. Now the question is, how does it apply? It's not whether it applies. It's how it applies.

For example, we were talking earlier about clean and unclean animal laws. Okay. We can't take those laws and apply them in the church today to separate

Jew from Gentile because the covenant has changed. The old one separated Jew from Gentile. The new one brings us together.

So then we can't use it. But that's part of the holiness. Okay. It doesn't mean that holiness stops.

It just means that holiness gets expressed in other ways. Okay. And 1

Peter 1 actually talks about, called, Be ye holy for I am holy. It cites from Leviticus.

Okay. And then it goes on and says in it, and this is how you show that you're holy, is by your love for one another.

Okay. So it comes right back around to this same thing. This love one another.

And the result is that you can begin to see how this works. Now you can't override the fact.

The problem in our culture is that we sometimes think, well, if this man loves this woman, they should be able to get together whether they're married or not.

You know, things like, there's all sorts of things like that. No, that's not what the text goes for.

Text says, no, there are certain basic foundational things that need to be worked out. If you want, one of the things that I, that helps me in discerning things in our culture is to think about it this way.

We have these two great commandments. If I love God, and if I love my neighbor, will this fit with what

I'm thinking about here? Okay. Will doing this love my neighbor? No.

There's many cases that won't, even if you think you're showing love. Okay. So that should be like your guiding principle.

There's guidance. There's guidance in this in terms of what's intended and what's not, what's allowed, what's not, and what's good and what's, it's not just what's not important.

It's not just sins of commission, but omission, leaving out loving those around us.

Okay. So we can't just say it's about not doing things. It's about doing things too.

And the text is full of both. Okay. It's filled with, okay, this you don't do because it's not going to fit in with loving

God and love your neighbor. But this you do because that's what loving God and loving your neighbor is about. That's an interesting way to like, what lens to put it through instead of like, okay, what's allowed?

What isn't allowed? What are the things that are going to send me to hell? Because I think that, you know, that's how I used to think.

That's how I feel like a lot of Christian thing. I'm like, okay, if I do this, I'm going to hell. But if I don't do this, I'm not going to hell, whatever it might be.

But if you just put it through the test of, is this helping me love God and love others? Yes or no.

I think a lot of people would argue homosexuality is, but when you say, is this loving God? Is this loving

God's original design? Is this honoring the way that he made us naturally? Then it wouldn't pass that test.

That's right. Well, one of the things that's helpful is Galatians talks a lot about this issue, about the law and the

Christian, about circumcision and the Christian and so on and so forth. Because a lot of people were teaching Gentiles, well, now you got to be circumcised and become like Jews.

Okay, this kind of thing. And he pushes back very hard on that. He doesn't want the church to think that that has to be the case.

And it's not, according to Acts 15. But in Galatians 5, he comes to this, verse 13,

Galatians 5, 13. For you were called freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So in relationships with people, this is important. It's foundational. He goes on and talks about the deeds of the flesh.

Then he says, verse 22, but the fruit of the spirit, very important passage, Galatians 5, 22.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

And he adds this at the end of that. He says, against such things, there is no law.

In other words, these are the kinds of things you do. There's no law against these things. These are the things the law wants you to do.

Okay, these are the things the Holy Spirit is guiding us into. So we live out of that.

And the more we get overwhelmed by the love of God in our lives and in our hearts and our way of thinking about things, the more we just, that's what we want to do.

I mean, you're simplifying such a difficult topic within the Bible. So I'm so grateful for you,

Dr. Eberbeck. What would you say to people that would argue that the Bible contradicts itself? You know, you've got this violent, vengeful, horrible, rageful,

I wouldn't say horrible, but rageful God. I'm reading about it right now in the Old Testament, and God's just abandoning and just delivering nations into violence.

And then you have Jesus, who's so inclusive and loving and saying, you know, love is the law. What would you respond to that?

Well, the problem with that thinking is there's nothing as judgmental and so on on God's part in the

Old Testament compared to the book of Revelation. That's in the New Testament, okay? Judgment is coming. God cannot be a loving

God if he's not a judging God. Because if he doesn't judge, that means he doesn't care what anybody does to anybody else.

Perfectly said. He doesn't care, okay? Perfectly said. He has to be a judging God if he's gonna be a loving God. Otherwise, there's no discernment.

There's no separating out good and evil. And so this is another area of simplistic misunderstanding, you know what

I mean, of the Bible. The judgment of God is a necessary thing because we have to have action against evil, okay, in the world in order for God to show that he's a loving

God. The problem is not whether God is loving. The problem is the fact that we're so corrupt.

And this corruption just ruins so much and does so much harm. God wants us to live out of the fact that he's a loving

God. And that's why he sent Christ. He sent Christ to help us to see that what he's all about is giving even of himself his own son, okay?

God is a radical God, okay? He does radical things. And one of the radical things is he sends his own son to die for us.

That is not an insignificant matter, okay? He's made it very personal. So for anybody who's listening, he wants us to make it personal back, okay?

It's not about what we do for God. It's about what God has done for us. This is what brings us into relationship with God and helps us to see what it means to live well in Jesus.

Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's, I don't think people are ready for like the humility check that comes with being a

Christian and really accepting that we don't get to decide what is good and what is bad because we didn't create it.

Yeah, yeah. I think that there can be a lot of confusion. This is a confusing life. You know, Romans 8 goes on and talks about the groaning that we experience in this life.

Life can get really hard. The whole creation groans and we groan right in the middle of it.

But then it goes on and talks about he's given us the Holy Spirit to groan for us to the Father. Which leads to the fact that that turns everything that happens in our lives into something that's good because he can use it to transform us into the image of Christ.

And he does that. So actually, I found that, frankly, I need trouble. I need tribulation in my life because otherwise

I'd be too stubborn to change. So it's important to learn that God is working some things in us and they're not all easy.

These things come hard because we're so corrupt. But the Holy Spirit has been given us to help us through this and bring us to it and transform us through the process, these things, the groanings that we face in life.

So would you say that reliance on the Holy Spirit through this groaning is the way that we can navigate a law that is quote -unquote weak?

Yes. Yes. The law, the reason the law is weak is because it can't change my heart.

It can give me a standard to live by, but what makes me live by it? You know what I mean? It's only the

Holy Spirit's work of changing my heart that actually enables some actual transformation so that I actually want to do what

God wants me to do as opposed to have this fleshly rebellion. I want what I want and that's all

I want. You know what I mean? Or I have to. Yeah. Like I don't want to enter into this with a spirit of I have to.

Yeah. It's not. It's I want to. And the Holy Spirit does this and that's why the

Holy Spirit is strong as opposed to the weakness of the law in this regard. But that's not it. It's important to remember all along the way the law is good.

It's holy. It's spiritual. It's just that it's weak in this regard. But the weakness is really in me.

It's my flesh. And the law can't change that, but the spirit can. And the spirit works specifically in that way in us so that we gain a spirit of adoption that we live by where nothing can separate me from the love of God.

This might be moving a little bit backwards, but I feel like this will tie it together is how revolutionary was this heart posture to people that received it?

The people at that time, like if today we can hear that and say, OK, yeah, we're just going to pivot towards that. It's like if it honors

God and it loves others, then OK, that's what we'll obey. But coming from like 2000 years ago or even before that, an ancient

Near East or like, you know, like a first I want to say like first century Jew versus like an ancient Near Eastern Israelite. Those are two separate groups of people in themselves.

But still, how did they respond to a law that was obedient to God and now a law that loves

God, loves others? Was that just like mind blowing to them to hear? In Judaism itself,

Jesus, when he answered the question, answered it the way Jews should answer it. OK, in other words, this is the center of a lot.

Nobody objected to what he said. In fact, they said in some of the other gospel talks about, oh, yeah, that's right. You know, that kind of thing.

In other words, Jesus was just telling them what they what they knew, but didn't understand. OK, they didn't they didn't take it in in the way that he wanted them to.

OK, which is learn how to love God and love your neighbor. Don't be just concerned about whether you eat this food or that food or whatever,

OK? Make sure that you're judging things by how well you're loving God and how well you're loving people.

So they knew that already. They just weren't obeying it. They actually did. See, this comes from Deuteronomy 6,

Leviticus 19. They already knew Deuteronomy 6 is like the key. Hear, O Israel, the

Lord our God is one Lord. OK, this is kind of like the theme verse of Judaism. And then it goes on.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul. That's where it comes from. OK, in other words, they knew that if there's only one

God, then your love should be totally devoted to him. OK, and so this idea of there's one

Lord means you have one to love. OK, and you have one to obey.

You have one to represent. And so this was all part of the context. And Jesus was living that out in ways they did not understand in Judaism.

By sitting with Gentiles, by sitting with sinners. And Jewish sinners, you know what

I mean? He reached across the boundaries and a lot of Jews would judge other

Jews because they weren't, you know what I mean, of their character and that kind of thing. And Jesus was saying, this is for all

Jews and Gentiles. And everything is level at the foot of the cross. And this is the whole idea.

Wow. Oh my gosh. This was really, I just feel checked in the Spirit. This was really convicting for me to hear.

And it definitely took a route that I've never heard in a sermon and I've never been able to put together. I mean, your systemic and systematic theology is so deep and clear.

So thank you, Dr. Averbeck, for explaining all of this. I'm sure that you have way more resources that can go deeper into this topic.

Do you have any books or seminars? This is the book that I wrote on it in 2022.

The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church. The reason I wrote the book was because of all these problems and all these confusions in the church.

There's a process that I went through to come to understand it this way by studying the law and how it comes through into the

New Testament for many, many years and teaching a course on it for many, many years. And so it's just through a long process.

But let's understand this has been a big problem in the church since the beginning of the church. This is not anything new.

Okay. And so the idea is to think about it well in light of what scripture says,

Old and New Testament together. Yeah. And I just think that this was such a refreshing episode just to really bring people out of the legalism that we feel in faith.

And, you know, it comes from a place of genuine obedience of like, I don't want to disobey God. So I'm not going to do certain things.

But I feel like you just blanketed it in this really pure, almost like filter of like how we should move forward.

It doesn't love God and love others versus is it allowed and not allowed? Yeah. Wow. Do you have any classes coming up that people can enroll in in the coming fall?

Actually, I'm retired. I'm an emeritus professor now. I'm doing a lot of research and writing and I'm writing a commentary on Genesis.

Okay. And so a lot of other articles and so on and so forth. So I'm not really retired.

I'm just retired from teaching full time. Well, congratulations. I'm working full time. Yeah. Congratulations.

It's, I'm thankful for the opportunity to do that. And I taught for 43 years full time, seminary level.

And so I have a lot to be thankful for. I teach a regular class in my church and I learn a lot by teaching in the church.

I hear what people are thinking and it helps me to learn to teach the Bible in a way that really comes into the church effectively.

That's the kind of questions that you're asking. I really appreciate all your good questions. I'm just trying to lead with the confusions that I have myself.

So I hopefully it reaches somebody else that's listening. But I just want to thank you for your time. This was so generous of you to chat with me so many times.

And then also for this hour. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for the invitation.