Is the Law Relevant Today? | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I continue our conversation about the law. We've covered so far law, gospel distinction, three uses of the law, and today we're going to have a discussion about the Bible and the law, and is the law still relevant today?

Because sometimes we confuse things like judicial, civil, and moral law. We're going to have a long discussion about the moral law. And in Semper Firmanda, we're going to talk about the fourth command, and does the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath fit as part of the moral law?

We hope this is edifying and that you learn to love and trust Christ more. We'll see you soon.

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The Threefold Division of the Law

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed confessional and pastoral perspective. Today, your hosts again are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm John Moffitt.

I am the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and it is good to be here with you today. Justin, last week we did a double hitter where we covered law gospel distinction and three uses of the law.

If you didn't hear those, I encourage you to go listen to those because today is going to be a continuation of that conversation. Justin, I'm going to go ahead. We're not going to waste any time this morning other than I will say for those who want them, we do have Trust Christ and Calm Down shirts back in the store permanently, so you can get them at any time that you want.

And we also have Trust Christ and Calm Down mugs, which I just ordered a bunch of them because we need to send them out to some of our reformers. Justin, when we meet up in the next few months, I will have several for you.

All right, my friend, speaking of Trust Christ and Calm Down, let's talk about the law and how it is that we should understand it and it actually should lead us to rest in Christ. Take it away.

Like you said, this is the third episode of three on the law, so if you haven't listened to the first two, please go back and do that. Today's conversation is going to make more sense to you probably, and it certainly will be more useful and helpful to you if you've already got the law gospel distinction and the three uses of the law in your mind.

So there's that. Here we go. Today, we're going to talk about the law and how it has been understood through history, and this is a relevant thing to talk about, and the word relevant is in our episode title, because I think a lot of Christians, if they're honest, struggle to know what to do with the law because the Bible is a big book.

The book of Moses, the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, that's a big section of Scripture in and of itself, and there's a lot of words there. There's a lot of commands. There's a lot of laws.

There's a lot written, and people seem to not know exactly what to make of it, especially now that we live in the new covenant era. So you have some people, I mean, I'm talking about Protestant, broad evangelical Christians.

I'm not even talking about sects and weird cultist stuff. Some people are in the church, and they think we need to obey the food laws that are given in the Old Testament. People are wigging out over whether or not tattoos are permissible now.

People are wondering if they can wear clothing that has blended fabric and all these kinds of things over here on the one hand, and then on the other hand, you have some people saying that nothing that happened in the Old Covenant, nothing that happened in the Old Testament, none of those laws or commands have anything to do with us now because it's a new era, and so here we are.

If it's not written in the New Testament explicitly, we don't even need to worry about it.

Justin Perdue. Which is what we received. When the third use of the law comes out, a lot of people give us that criticism. Why would you ever say there's another use of the law when it's been fulfilled by Christ?

Justin Perdue. Sure. So there's just a lot of confusion here. We're going to try to clear up some of that today, I guess, is a simple way to put it.

Justin Perdue From a confessionally reformed pastoral perspective.

Justin Perdue Yes, historical, confessional, reformed perspective.

Justin Perdue. Which all means biblical for those of you that are saying, well, why not the Bible?

Justin Perdue. Hear us say biblical. There's a lot of stuff going on on Christian Twitter about biblicalism and confessionalism and stuff. Some of what's being said is actually very good. To be confessional is simply to be biblical, as we understand it.

So we're going to have this conversation today. Historically speaking, confessional reformed types have understood that the law of God, high-level law of God, can be broken down into three parts. Sometimes this is referred to as the threefold division of the law, sometimes referred to as the tripartite division of the law, tripartite three parts.

What are those three parts?

Justin Perdue. That's the most technical fieldcast we'll get for you.

Maybe.

Wait until SR. SR today is going to definitely be for the theological types. And if you've ever wondered about the Sabbath command and how to wrestle with that as a confessional Baptist for us, but even as a confessional reformed person, we're going to talk about some of that in SR.

So if that's something that interests you, I don't know if it is or not, but we're going to give it. A good salesmanship, John. So three parts of the law, what are they? One, you have the moral law of God.

We're going to get into these in more detail, but I'm just going to give a drive-by, flyover definition of these things. The moral law of God first. This is the law of comprehensive obedience that was written into Adam's heart in creation.

So it is a significant piece of what we call the covenant of works. And if you don't know what I'm talking about there, we would refer you to some of our material on covenant theology. But then that law also was summarized and given by God to his people through Moses and written down on two tablets of stone.

So when you hear moral law, you can think synopsis, 10 commandments. You also even further could think synopsis of Christ, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself.

That's the moral law. Second piece of the law in our three-fold division or tripartite division of the law would be the ceremonial law that God gave to his people, Israel. So the second and third parts of the law, the ceremonial and then the third, which I'm going to get to in just a minute, were uniquely given to the nation of Israel under the old covenant in a unique era of redemptive history.

And we're going to unpack more of what that means here in just a minute. But the ceremonial law are the various laws given by God to Israel pertaining to things like, but not limited to, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, food laws, feast days, etc.

Sabbaths, all these things. We'll talk about that. There's the ceremonial law. Finally, the third part of the law were the laws given by God to the nation of Israel to govern them. This is the judicial law, sometimes called the civil law.

So whenever you read about things about how Israel is to govern itself, how disputes are to be handled within the nation state, within the geopolitical reality that was old covenant Israel, as established by the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David.

That is real. That's the judicial law. And so we're going to think about those three parts in reverse order now. So we're going to go back through these, talk about them at more length, try to apply them, try to answer some questions, maybe consider some potential objections, and hopefully in all of this, encourage us in the Lord Jesus and what he's done for us.

So all of that, John, in like the next 30 minutes.

Or less than.

Or less than, maybe 28. Kind of a light lift, right?

Yeah, that's right. No, that's good. I think that's a helpful definition. And for those of you, if you've been at this far in the podcast, we do find this very relevant. If you don't understand how the law is to be used, you are going to be lost often in the Old Testament.

And you're going to glance over like the Levitical law and why we're going to show you how it's connected to Christ and how it's glorious and wonderful. So we make the argument and we make it because Paul is the one who instructed us to have this argument that all things in the Bible are profitable.

And so we're going to show you how the law in all three areas of how the Bible is expressed is definitely useful and profitable for the believer today, not just the Jewish culture under Israel, but for the believer today.

So, Justin, I guess we'll start in reverse and walk through it.

The Judicial Law and General Equity

Yeah, judicial law first. So we'll begin with this. I've already said it, but I'll just reiterate. The judicial law are those laws God gave to the nation state, the geopolitical reality called Israel as established by the old covenant.

All of that language is important because we need to realize that the judicial law was given to this nation, to this particular people established under these particular covenants for a particular season, era of redemptive history.

So I'm not going to bury the lead here. We understand that when the nation of Israel as instituted under the old covenant ceased to be a nation, the judicial law of God was no longer binding on any people group.

This is important. So, in other words, what we're saying, old covenant Israel as established by the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David ceased to be a nation when Rome ended that nation in the first century.

And we understand that there is a nation called Israel today that was established a number of decades ago, but that is not the one and the same thing. That is not Israel as founded by the covenants God made with Abraham and with Moses and with David.

Basically, you're saying the promises made in the Old Testament under the covenant of the Old Testament are not the same promises to the nation of Israel today.

Correct.

Yes, I would agree.

Correct.

And the laws given to govern Israel under the old covenant are no longer binding on people today as given. So the confessions, all the reformed confessions, but we're going to talk about the 1689 London Baptist Confession, which is the one that we subscribe to.

The confessions will use the language of the value now of the judicial law that God gave to Israel is seen in the principles of general equity or the principles of general justice that are contained therein.

So, in other words, to put that in common language, we can look to the laws that God gave Israel to govern that nation state and see the principles of justice and equity that are contained in it, and we can glean from that wisdom for how we might order ourselves today in our various nation states and various geopolitical realities.

But we do not understand that we are bound by the Bible to draw a straight line from Canaan to California in order to be faithful to God.

Right.

And what you're getting at is something that's been rising lately in the theological world called theonomy.

Oh, yeah, there it is.

So I understand why you're making this clear distinction, and it is important to understand that there is a belief, and we're not going to get into this. We'll put some recommended podcasts down here.

I know that the Pactum did an excellent job of explaining theonomy. I know it's on our dock. We're sliding things over as we're knocking them down, so we'll eventually get to that for those of you that might be interested.

But it is important to understand promise and fulfillment and purpose, right? Exactly. So you understand the purpose of the Old Testament. Israel had an important role to play in the coming of the Messiah, and so God established this nation, protected the nation, put a covenant around the nation for the purpose of bringing Messiah.

And when Messiah came, the purpose of the nation was fulfilled. And inside that is a lot of things, not just bringing us the Messiah was not their only role, but it was also a type and shadow of a lot of things, of our redemption, of the blood atonement sacrifices, of the structure of the nation of Israel, how it transfers over into some structures in the New Testament.

So there's a role and a purpose here. The danger is to think that that carries on and that every nation to this day should be governed by the same judicial laws, meaning like if a man sleeps with another woman other than his wife, he should be stoned.

That is not to be carried over. That should not be seen. And we have a lot of, we can't get into it in this podcast, but there's an important understanding that the judicial law has been fulfilled and done away with.

We are no longer under that. As Justin says, we can glean from it and it's helpful for us in the guiding, and it's extremely helpful in understanding the flow and purpose of what we would say the redemption of sinners.

The way I might frame it is the purpose for which those laws were given has been fulfilled in that Israel has served its purpose in God's economy of redemption. God always intended to use that nation that he established through Abraham called Israel.

He would always use that nation to bless and save the nations. He would save a people, Jew and Gentile, into one body in his son, Jesus Christ. Israel was essential in the plan of God in accomplishing that great plan.

The judicial laws given to govern the nation of Israel were subservient to that great plan of redemption, and now that Israel has served its purpose in that plan of redemption, those laws have as well.

That's the judicial law.

Justin Perdue. There's two podcasts I would recommend here that Justin and I will go into this a little bit deeper. We did one on dispensationalism, which would deal a little bit of this, and then we also did one on pre-millennialism, so we'll put those down in the description, but they're going to do a little bit about this fulfillment and why it is that we would hold this view because there is a dispensational view that would talk about the reinstatement of Israel and how there's going to be a future here.

We're not going to deal with that today, but if you would like more information about those two, they'll be in the link in the description below.

The Ceremonial Law as Type and Shadow

Let's move on to the next part of the law that we want to consider. Having already considered the judicial, we're going to now consider the ceremonial law. Again, to reiterate, these are the laws God gave to Israel in the covenant that he made with Moses and with Israel through Moses the moderator, the mediator of that covenant, I should say.

These laws have to do with various things. They have to do with the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the food laws, the feast days, the Sabbaths, years of Jubilee. We could go on and on and on and on, so there's a lot of them.

This is important, again, not to bury the lead here and just to go ahead and say it and get us on an encouraging track. Read the book of Hebrews and read certain sections in the book of Acts, Acts 10, Acts 11, etc., and we come to understand very clearly that the purpose of all of these ceremonial laws, the purpose of all of the feasts and the sacrificial system and the priesthood and all of this stuff was to point to Christ who would come and fulfill them and accomplish everything that these things were pointing to.

We can unashamedly, unequivocally, with joy say that these laws have been fulfilled and abrogated in the Lord Jesus Christ and are no longer binding for us because the one who is the fulfillment of them has come.

Justin Perdue. So Paul uses this language in multiple of his letters called the mystery of Christ. This would probably be a great example of how many people have read Leviticus and they scratch their head.

It is so strange and they get to that part of their Bible reading and they're not quite sure how it is that we're going to handle this. Multiple times Paul says that the joy and gift he was given was to make clear that which had not fully been revealed.

Because when we think about a mystery, it's not like God was hiding something from them or doing some kind of bait and switch. It's just what we call progressive revelation. I love the concept of types and shadows.

When you get closer to a shadow and the substance gets closer or the light gets closer to the substance, then that shadow becomes clearer and clearer and then eventually you just don't need the shadow.

You can look up and see the actual. Well, that's what Paul is doing. He takes a lot of what's happening in the ceremonial and he explains how these are types and shadows in their pictures, giving us insight of what's to come.

The reason why sometimes people don't understand why it's so necessary for us to have all of these civil laws and have all these judicial laws, when you look at when Christ appears, Jesus himself, according to his own words, and the apostles, they say the Old Testament law this includes the first five books of the Old Testament are written about Christ.

When Jesus shows up on the scene, you can look at the shadow, you look at the substance, and you go, they're one and the same. We know this is the right guy. We know it's him. Paul says, this mystery, my responsibility is to point to the Old Testament and then show you that this is the clear path to who Christ is.

Justin Perdue reads a number of things that Paul wrote.

The letter to the Galatians is a good example here. I've already mentioned the letter to the Hebrews, but in the whole debate over whether circumcision is a thing in the new covenant, this is part and parcel because circumcision is also a piece of the ceremonial law.

So, is it something that we need to observe today in order to be faithful to God? I've mentioned this in the podcast in the past. I'll give another example. People read the language, for example, in Exodus 12 about the Passover.

I understand that the law had not yet been given to Moses, but the Passover, along with other feasts, is a piece of the ceremonial law, commands that God gave. He said these are statutes to be obeyed forever.

You're going to observe this forever. We need to be observing the Passover now, don't we? God said forever. To which we say we are in multiple senses. One, in that Christ is our Passover lamb. He has fulfilled the Passover, and we trust in Christ.

In addition, we observe the meal that is a fulfillment of the Passover called the Lord's Supper, which also will be fulfilled anew when the Lord Jesus next drinks of the fruit of the vine. He's going to do it with us in the new heavens and the new earth in the marriage supper of the lamb.

We can see how all of these arcs of types and shadows, fulfillment, and all that kind of stuff track through Scripture. The ceremonial law is that, effectively. It was given to teach us about the Savior, and not only about who he would be, but in particular what he would come to do.

To make atonement, to cleanse us, to be our mediator, all of these things, and he's done.

That.

Paul uses this as a completion language. This is Colossians 1 .25, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. So, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

That's the final culmination. This stuff is important, and it also has a fulfillment. That's just one example. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 3, talks about this in 1 Corinthians 2, verses 6 through 10, the same idea.

The ceremonies are not just this weird thing that God wanted to do for the sake of Israel. They were mysteriously set up in mystery, meaning that they didn't fully understand everything of the implications of what was happening.

Many of them didn't even understand that the final conclusion of this would have reached out to the Gentiles, not just the Jews. Gentile meaning the rest of the world.

Justin Perdue. That's right. So I think we've done a decent job there on the ceremonial law, and the New Testament is very clear that it doesn't so much matter now what we eat or what we drink or all these kinds of things, and what days you observe or know.

These matters are at most matters of liberty and freedom, but we're not under this anymore because Christ has fulfilled them, and they've been abrogated in him. Now we're going to move on to the last part for our consideration of the law.

So we've talked in reverse order of how I named them at the beginning. We have considered the judicial law. We've considered the ceremonial law. We will now consider the moral law. So the moral law is not like the other two in multiple ways, and we're going to try to.

Make this plain.

The moral law, it's critical that we begin with creation. When God made Adam, he wrote a law of comprehensive obedience into humanity. So that law of comprehensive obedience combined with the positive commands of keep the garden, protect it, fill the earth, and subdue it, and a particular prohibition, do not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that we understand makes up the conditions and the requirements of what we call the covenant of works.

As I said earlier, God would, through Moses, summarize the moral law in 10 commandments and 10 words that are written down on two tablets of stone. The first four commands having to do with our love to God, the latter six commands having to do with our love to neighbor.

Romans 5, 12 to 14, is critical for our understanding here, John, because our understanding, along with the confessional reform through history, is that the moral law is transcendent because it existed from creation.

It existed before Israel was ever a thing. It existed before Abraham. So it's different than the judicial and the ceremonial law that was uniquely situated within Israel under the old covenant. The moral law transcends, and it's a part of the covenant of works, sometimes referred to as the covenant of creation.

Every man, from Adam to now and until the world ends, is under obligation to keep that law, and it's obvious that that's true.

Why?

Because everybody's dying. The reason everybody's dying is because nobody is keeping that covenant. Adam broke it, and we died in him, and now we do what Adam did. Nobody's keeping the covenant, which is why we all die, which is exactly what Paul is pointing out in Romans 5, 12 to 14.

Even though the law was not given to Moses, everybody's dying from Adam to Moses because the moral law of God is a thing, and the covenant of works is a thing that everybody is under. Now, there are multiple things that we're going to talk about here.

We're going to talk about what that means in terms of the moral law and its application. This relates very much to our three uses conversation last week because we're going to talk about the law and how it guides us, but ultimately we're still going to talk about Christ and how he fulfilled this too, even though the moral law is still a thing.

Justin Perdue. That's right.

Well, even in Romans 1 and 2, why is it that no one is without excuse? Because what could be revealed has been revealed, as you said, even from Adam to Moses. Before it was written down in stone, it was written in the heart.

This is what he says in chapter 1. They're without excuse. Chapter 2, even though they were not under the law, the law was still written in their heart, and therefore they're still violating the law. Paul is talking about the moral law here.

I know that there's confusion because there's a heavy sense where you hear, no, there's no more law, there's no more law. I think it's important to understand that this is us continuing a little bit of our conversation from last week on the uses of the law.

You have to understand that the law was fulfilled by Christ. And this is the obligations of the law, and one of the obligations is one must do the law in order to prove and earn for themselves righteousness.

I can't help but tie it in here, Justin, real quick. I think it's going to be helpful, and then we'll go back to explaining how the moral law works for still today. In the covenant of works, or you can call it whatever you want, it was said to this Adam, if he would have obeyed rightly and not ate of the fruit, something would have happened.

What we learned from that is he would have entered into the glory of God. He would have had the right by means of obedience, by the means of righteousness. Because when God created Adam, Adam was sinless but not righteous.

Righteousness is the presence of obedience. It's the presence of something. It's not the absence of something. Adam would have proved his righteousness, or he would have earned righteousness. He would have earned the right to say, I have obeyed.

He would have earned eternal blessedness.

That's right, and entered into glory. This is what it is in the New Testament, but Paul and the writer of Hebrews and in Thessalonians, he talks about how glory is to be in the presence of the Father forever without the potential of sin, without the potential of death.

Adam would have entered into that state. This is when Paul says that Christ is the second Adam. It means he did what the first Adam could not do, or we could say the last Adam. He fulfilled the law. I think what we would say here is he fulfilled the moral obligations to the law that you and I cannot fulfill, which is to love God and love neighbor perfectly.

Those who are in Christ by faith are no longer under the law as a covenant of works.

That's right.

Meaning, that's the key. I'll say that again. Those who are in Christ by faith are no longer under the law as a covenant of works. What do we mean by that? We mean what John just said, that Christ, Romans 10, 4, is the end of the law for righteousness.

We do not, in the new covenant in Christ Jesus, seek to keep the moral law of God for righteousness. Brief caveat, that was never the intention of the moral law to begin with, and it was only because of confusion that people would have ever thought that they could keep said law for righteousness.

This is why, again, ceremonial laws, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, all of this was teaching people that they needed atonement, and they needed forgiveness, and they needed all these things.

And they had all the types and shadows to show them that.

Right, exactly. In covenant theology is a factor here too, where this son of David, the righteous branch that God's going to raise up for David, is going to come and execute justice and righteousness in the land and be the one who is called the Lord as our righteousness.

All of that's a factor here. But we do not understand that the moral law is binding upon us in terms of a requirement for righteousness, because Christ has fulfilled the moral law in that way. When he says in Matthew 5 .17 that I didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets, but I came to fulfill them, and not anything in this law, 5 .17 and following, not anything in this law, not a dot, not an iota, should be removed until all is accomplished.

He's meaning there that we ought not take away the moral law in terms of what it says and what its standard is and how it would guide our living. But he has come to fulfill that.

That's right.

So that's key in terms of the requirements for righteousness part.

Fulfill the requirement, meaning one must be righteous under this law. Exactly, and the only way one can demonstrate righteousness is adhering to the law, not generally, yes, perfectly.

Perpetually and personally.

There is no forgiveness in the law, meaning that once you fail the righteous requirements of the law, there is no do-overs. That's why in Adam all died.

Correct. This is very much tethered to our conversation on the first use of the law that we had last week, where the first and primary use of the law in Galatians 3, Romans 5, and other places is to show us our sin and our need of Christ and drive us to him who's our Savior.

Yeah, so Christ fulfilled the moral law in our place, John. That's clear. We're no longer under it for righteousness. We're no longer under it in terms of it being a covenant of works that crushes us because Christ has fulfilled his obligations for us.

But we would say, third use of the law that we talked about last week, the moral law exists to guide our living because we would ask ourselves, all right, what does it look like to live in a way that God would say is good, and what does it look like to live in a way that's good for my neighbor?

How do you know?

That's right.

Well, you know from the law as given in the moral law in the Old Testament, and also as expounded upon in various commands and imperatives in the New Testament. That's all it is. Love of God, love of neighbor, that's all that the imperatives and the commands in the New Testament are, is expounding upon what it looks like in more detail to love God and love neighbor.

Jesus even says this. This is the summation of the law, to love God and love neighbor. Even when he says in Galatians 6 -2, bear you one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. I think it's important to understand that the law, it does not go away, and the value of the law does not go away, but the purposes of the law do.

In other words, we do not live under the law in fear of its retribution. We live under the law looking to it as saying these are reflections of the nature and heart of the Father. If you think about most of the law outside of love God, there are negatives in that.

Your heart's going to desire another woman than your wife, but you cannot do that. Your heart's going to desire the objects of another person, and you're going to covet them, but you should not do that.

Justin Perdue. You're going to be angry, and at times you're going to want to kill your brother, and you can't.

Jon Moffitt. That's right.

But when we fail in those areas, which 1 John says you will, you're going to fail, Hebrews 4 says you can, with boldness, run. This is where the difference of the law comes in. Because of the moral law, it's different in that we can run into the Father's presence and ask for mercy in time of need.

That doesn't mean that the law isn't. Let me ask you this. If the law is no longer relevant, why would you run into the presence of the Father and ask for mercy? Because you violated the law.

Justin Perdue. You understand what sin is. Paul says this. We know what sin is because the law exists. How do you know that you should honor your father and your mother? Yes, you intuitively understand these things because this law is written into you, but you understand explicitly that it's sin to not honor your father and mother because God said so.

You understand that it is wrong in a pointed way to bear false witness about your neighbor because God says so. These are all things in your sinful nature that you're naturally going to do because you're naturally self-absorbed and self-interested as a fallen human.

God has to tell us, in terms of prohibition, don't do these things. Even though we intuitively know this because we all have a conscience, because we're made in God's image and the covenant works as a thing, we also need this clear teaching from the Scriptures in the form of law so that we can look at something and say that's sin.