Grace and Law X: A Law Divided?

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Steve Crampton, and we are looking at the theme of the interplay between the law and the gospel in the life of a believer in the new covenant.

And this is a theme we've been talking a lot prior to filming today. It's a theme that has really risen to the surface quite a few times through Christian history.

You can think of the Apostle Paul in Romans 6, where he implies that he is being accused of being what we would call today, antinomian.

That obedience to the moral law is useless, or at least unimportant, non -essential, since we are justified by faith in Christ.

And so Paul, of course, answers that, that the gospel does not lead to a life of self -indulgent autonomy.

But long after Paul, we read in Luther, and Luther's strong emphasis on justification, not through works guided by the

Roman Catholic Church, but through a faith in the labors and the death of Jesus Christ alone, justification by faith in Christ alone.

Of course, that strong emphasis, we have an enemy who always comes alongside truth and gives us a little nudge, and if we're not careful, we go too far.

And Luther often had to deal not only with Roman Catholic legalism, but the new -born

Protestant antinomianism. Those that said, Luther's right, the law doesn't matter.

And I can't remember who he was writing, but I believe I'm correct in saying that Luther was the first to actually coin the term antinomian, anti -nomos, the

Greek word for law. You are against the law. Later the Puritans in the 1600s, late 1500s, in their emphasis,

I think particularly in the culture, the spiritual culture, you know, you're trying to pastor a church in a nation where 94 % of the people have been baptized into the state church.

And so you look at the culture and 94 % of the people do not love the Lord Jesus, but they're pretty sure they're okay.

And so the Puritans' job, in part, was to plow up the wrong foundation and to lay a good foundation of biblical

Christianity. And in doing so, and using strong emphasis on evidence of new birth is a changed life, new beliefs, new desires, new choices, sanctification, perseverance.

You know, but if you harp on that a long time, you do leave yourself open to the accusation of being a legalist.

You know, are you saying we're saved by the law? No. And in that century of what we call the

Puritan movement, there are a lot of groups with underneath that umbrella. Some, not many, were labeled antinomian.

And I don't think that they were what we would call practical antinomians, that they wanted to live godless lives.

They lived very godly lives, very admirable men. But in their doctrine, they wrote and said, you know,

Christ alone. But what that meant was, we don't need to be talking so much about law.

And that got labeled antinomianism. And so even in the Puritan movement within the different groups under that umbrella, there tended to be some books back and forth.

And of course, we feel it today. In the last 10 years especially, it seems that it's resurfaced where men may call themselves new covenant theologians, or, you know, the different titles, and under each title there's always variations.

But those that say the moral law doesn't really have a place in the Christian life.

And I would add that the believers, professed believers today that hold that position, are far more libertine in their lives than any of the antinomians so labeled by the

Puritans were. Yeah, yeah. And generally, historically, when enough time passes that, you know, the dust clears, you kind of have theological antinomians and practical antinomians.

And sometimes they're the same, but sometimes they're not. So yeah, you know, in our day, you know, the question of, well, what is holiness?

And is it essential? And then so as we have kind of a group swinging toward a kind of a, you know, a free -for -all, moral free -for -all under the banner of grace, then in the church, of course you have a reaction and you have some swinging the other direction.

And the tendency is always that confusion is the result.

And when there's confusion, and we do care about, because the

Christian does care, we care about the honor of the Lord and the good of souls. So where there's confusion, there's often conflict and sometimes bitter.

So we're trying to just kind of review this topic. And really, if you've been with us, you'll notice that our podcast is really not designed for those who have already done a lot of thinking and reading on this for the, you know, those of you that may say that you're

Reformed with a capital R and you've done a lot of thinking. Really, the podcast is designed much more just to remind those who have already thought of these things of some of the key points, but also for those who love the

Lord, but whatever, you know, religious tradition, whatever church tradition you find yourself in, you're not exactly sure what the argument is.

You just know there's an argument and you love the Lord. So you think obedience is important, but you don't want to be a legalist, so you're not sure where the law plays into that.

So really, that's the group that we hope to be most beneficial to. And our guide for this is a man named

Ernie Reisinger. And Reisinger is the author of this book,

The Law and the Gospel. He was a Reformed Baptist pastor.

He was a critical leader in the early days of the movement that's now called the Founders Movement within Southern Baptists to try to help

Southern Baptists return to theologically more Reformed roots. And he was also the first Baptist or first American trustee on the board of the

Banner of Truth Trust. So we all really like Banner of Truth. So it's kind of interesting to come to meet this man.

So that's kind of the introduction, a big introduction. So Steve, why don't you bring us up to speed?

Where did we start and kind of what have we hit up to this point? Sure. Well, in considering the law, especially as it pertains to the gospel, we went all the way back to the very beginning and considered where was the law before Mount Sinai and the actual giving of the formal

Ten Commandments. So we looked at Adam. We looked at the fall.

We looked at the fact that every one of the Ten Commandments can be seen in those passages between Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 to have actually been applied against the people of God.

And so we can see that that law was always present, immutable, just as the giver of the law is immutable and perfect in all his ways.

So it was written on Adam's heart. We talked about conscience. We talked about sometimes called the natural law.

Then we got to the actual giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. And we also considered some of the commentary by some of the early reformers,

John Calvin in particular, and likewise principles, hermeneutics, for how you interpret and understand those

Ten Commandments, which I personally was greatly benefited from. So that sort of brings us in a brief nutshell up to where we are today.

Today we start what will take a few weeks for us to cover, and that is what Reisinger calls a couple of the difficulties that we run into as we deal with this topic.

And the difficulties we're talking about today, I guess we could sum them up as two.

One difficulty comes in understanding the meaning of the word law as it's used throughout the

Old Testament. It's used in a number of ways, and Steve, you're going to lead us through that in a minute.

And another difficulty comes in the kind of classic Protestant designation of the law, the

Sinaitic law, into three categories, the moral, ceremonial, and civil law.

And these words don't actually show up in the text, so they are theological designations.

Are they accurate or not? That's the question. So some people don't like those, others feel that they're very helpful, and if you do not distinguish kind of the nature of those three aspects of the law, whether you hold to a sharp division, and whether you hold to that kind of orthodox description or not, then there are some problems you can run into, and we'll be talking about those.

So Steve, walk us through that issue of the different meanings of the word law.

Sure, and let me begin by saying one can grow very confused very quickly if you try to understand the uses of the term law throughout the

Old Testament and the New in one single narrow sense. So there is, in logic, as you may know,

John, a fallacy of definitions where you either grow too broad in your definition and it's too loose, or you go too narrow and you're not covering enough, or you even do a circular kind of definition where you use the term to define itself.

A law is a law that so -and -so kind of thing. Well, in Scripture, we have all kinds of uses of the term law.

Sometimes it refers to just the Pentateuch, those first five books of the Bible. Sometimes it actually is used to refer only to the ceremonial law.

Sometimes it refers to the judicial law. You have also expressions such as this, the law of Moses, for example, in Malachi 4 .4

it uses that, or the law of Christ referred to in, for example, Galatians 6 .2.

You also have mention of the law of love in Matthew 22, or Romans 8, the law of sin and death.

And you can add to that, to further muddy the waters, use in Proverbs in chapter 13, for instance, the law of the wise.

And of course, we're all familiar today, at least, they didn't have it at the time that Scripture was written, the law of gravity or the law of averages.

It can be such a loose term. There are even passages which

I think rightly understood refer to the law as the entirety of Scripture, including the

Mosaic law, the prophets, the wisdom literature, everything. So how can we understand it here?

Let's go with Reisinger's definition set forth on page 48.

Let me just read that for us. In brief, this word law in its natural signification, both in the

Old and New Testaments, signifies any doctrine, instruction, law, ordinance, or statute, divine or human, which teaches, directs, commands, or binds men to any duty which they owe to God or man.

So that's a pretty broad definition, but it is, I think, a solid one that encompasses this use of the term law.

Of course, what we've been focusing on in this podcast, and I think what is primary for us as believers post -Christ, is the moral law, most commonly summarized in the

Ten Commandments. But that's sort of the nutshell of the danger of use of the term law in even

Scripture. Yeah, and really, and sometimes, you know, if you're sitting in the pew, the preacher will say in the middle of the sermon, now this word here in the original language means something different, or a better translation, or maybe a fuller, amplified translation that would help you understand more deeply and more completely the meaning of this verse.

And so they give you the translation of a Hebrew or a Greek word. But even that really doesn't clarify.

It's just, it's the context. So it is essential to understand that when that word law is used, and whether it's the

Greek or the Hebrew and the different ways we translate them, there can be different meanings depending on where it shows up.

And so that's where context is important, and we have to be careful. We don't want to bend the Scripture to fit our perspective, but we do want to let the context of that passage.

So here we have a word in a paragraph. So how does that paragraph inform the way

I interpret the word? And how does the word form the way

I interpret that paragraph? And then, but that paragraph is part of a book, or part of a long argument in a book, and that book is part of a whole

Bible. And so we come back in one sense to one of the hermeneutic principles, the principles for interpreting a text.

That is, in the Scripture we have progressive revelation. And we are really, we ought to be so grateful that we have the

New Testament, which does not in any way contradict the Old, but does illuminate it or pull the curtain back in a way that was never pulled back in the

Old. So there's that progressive opening, and we are seeing ever more clearly.

So this, when I read Paul and James and John, when I listen to Christ's teaching to the crowds,

I understand more completely this issue of law. And then when

I go back to Deuteronomy, it helps me to understand the big picture and to put that into context.

Yes, that unity of Scripture, I think, is so critical here. And we commented in a past broadcast, the law of Moses is the law of Christ, understood in that moral law context.

And so easy to get derailed if you get hung up on use of the term law without considering context and that unity.

And that brings us to that second issue that Reisinger talks about, and that is the classic categorization of the law given at Sinai into three big sections, and each of them kind of containing a different emphasis.

And so it is the ceremonial law, the moral law, and the civil law.

And so let's kind of think about that. So we'll start with the moral law. What's that talking about?

The moral law is that law which represents the wisdom and straightness, the perfectness of God's character.

When that law is given, it is not possible to give a better moral law, the wisdom of God.

It is not possible to give a contradictory moral law that is good, because this is a perfectly straight code.

It's the plumb line that the Creator Himself gives. We've talked about it before. In a sense, we could say that the

Ten Commandments or the moral law that is summarized in the Ten Commandments, it is as if we were shining a light through the moral perfection of God, and it's penetrating into our kind of world, our physical, limited world.

And in our physical, limited world, what does the moral purity of God look like?

Well, it looks like this. He hates adultery. You know, He loves truth, et cetera.

And so the moral law is ultimately an expression of God's perfection, and that is unchangeable.

So the moral law is the unalterable code that deals with right and wrong based in the perfection of God.

And so because of that, Reisinger says that, you know, what was right for Adam or wrong for Adam was right or wrong for everyone else in the

Bible, and it's right and wrong today. And frankly, we would be shocked, I think, if we saw, wait a minute, that wasn't wrong for Adam, but it's wrong for me.

We would feel this was unfair, right? We would be offended by that. Right, so, you know, I think sometimes when we're dealing with questions, you can get kind of lost.

The forest gets lost for the trees. So you're reading someone's blog online or their article, and you think, oh,

I don't know, that sounds so right. And then you read someone else from an opposite perspective, and you get tangled up. So sometimes

I have to just say to myself, okay, if I take my theological opponent, the person

I don't agree with in this situation, if I take their argument to its final destination and I apply it fully, what kind of life results?

Well, if, for example, if the moral law is, it can be set aside, then can

I imagine the Apostle Paul saying that because of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, that God now delights in adultery, or God now delights in murder, or God delights in cruelty, or in deception, or in idolatry?

You know, I cannot imagine any of the Ten Commandments disappearing because of the cross.

You know, quite the opposite. We have so much more motivation and such sweet assistance by the

Spirit to take those laws to heart. So, you know, and again, with the argument with Adam, can we imagine that it was right for Adam to deceive, to worship other gods, as long as he didn't, you know, eat of the tree?

So obviously, that code existed unwritten, and it hasn't changed.

That's the moral law. Think about the ceremonial law. It's that group of laws that regard procedures of worship, and these are not necessarily ethical.

They don't deal with ethical conduct, what is fundamentally right for all ages and what is fundamentally wrong.

So let's think of it this way. In the book of Leviticus, in particular, you have a lot, in the end of Exodus, you have a lot of really specific things.

So let's take the specific laws regarding the tabernacle. The cloth that formed the curtains around the tabernacle were to be made a certain size out of certain material and hung in a certain way on poles cut from certain wood covered in certain metals.

Now, we wouldn't look at any of those things and say that that is an ethical issue.

You know, gold versus silver versus bronze is not ethical. Purple string versus red thread is not ethical until God gives a command, what we call a positive command, where God says, this is how

I want you to build it. And then, because it's God that says it, it becomes ethical. It is from that point forward, it is wrong to disregard it.

Because sin is the transgression of the law. Right. And the lawgiver has issued a command. Right. And so, even though these are not dealing directly with fundamental right and wrong, because they come from the lawmaker with that authority, they become binding.

But the ceremonial law was designed to be set aside eventually.

It was designed to become obsolete when it was fulfilled. We don't normally think of things that God designs as being designed to become obsolete.

You know, if someone says to us, well, that is an old book that you're reading, and that's obsolete.

We say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not obsolete. It's timeless. But when it comes to the ceremonial law, they would be right.

Those sacrifices, those special rituals, that particular way of approaching this issue, that's obsolete.

Well, it is, but not because we've outgrown it as a race. Or just because of its age.

And not because God doesn't matter anymore, but because it was designed to portray, to foreshadow with object lessons, generation after generation, thousands of times, repeated in front of our eyes.

It showed what Christ would do for the sinner, who is a lawbreaker.

Where do we get that, John? Are you just making that up? No, yeah. Somewhere in scripture. Clearly then, well, one great place to look would be, you know, the book of Hebrews, where it's explained that these things were glorious, but they have passed away, and the glory of the thing that followed it, the new covenant, is so glorious that it's as if this never had any glory.

In fact, in our church, one of our pastors is taking us through 2 Corinthians, and he's in chapter 3, comparing old covenant, new covenant.

So that kind of touches on the ceremonial law. And he, you know, he compared, you know, like a beautiful bright moon, where you feel like, wow, that is so bright.

It's almost like daylight. You know, you could almost walk around without any light. But as bright and beautiful as that looks, if you were to compare that to a noonday sun with no cloud in the sky, no comparison.

So the old covenant, with its ceremonial law, had a purpose, but the purpose was fulfilled in the coming of Christ.

And that's why it has now been completed or finished. So that's passed away.

The third type of law is the civil law. And that is the code that God gives, the particular applications of the principles in the moral law.

And it's given to Israel as a nation to establish the nation, to preserve the nation, but also to distinguish them.

There are things about the moral law of the Israelites, like the ceremonial law, that very clearly set them apart as a people who are unique.

And the reason that's important is that for those thousands of years, people, the nations looking at Israel should see you are a unique people.

And then the question is why? And the answer is because we belong to a unique God. And so, you know, that living sermon of the uniqueness of Israel.

And so the civil law was given to Israel and not binding on the other nations.

Now, a couple of objections we want to deal with, or a couple of kind of warnings or applications.

First, the objection of, as we mentioned earlier, these terms don't appear in Scripture.

So, Steve, if someone says, well, I don't find any of these terms in my Bible, and I'm a

Bible believer, so how would you explain to them the benefit of these terms, or lack of it, in light of that fact?

Yeah, and I think, you know, that's a fair question. We need to be asking these questions and sort of like the

Bereans, going back to Scripture and examining, are these things really so? And one of the things that we've actually touched on,

I think, some programs ago, is consider even how these laws were given originally.

So Moses gave the ceremonial laws, the civil laws, and they were reduced.

We don't have exactly, you know, the original manuscript that he used, but on something like vellum or parchment that is in itself, as you kind of mentioned, the obsolescence.

It's a temporary sort of thing. It passes away, no matter how well preserved. And we have these museums in the

Smithsonian that do all these amazing things with the temperature and the humidity and so forth to preserve paper as best we can, but it's a temporary commodity.

It simply is. By contrast, when God gives the Ten Commandments, God himself gives them, not

Moses. They're written with the finger of God on tables, the stone tablets, right?

These are as close to permanent in that figurative sense as you can get.

So right there is a pretty stark distinction, right? So out of the box, just how they're given.

And again, origin is important, right? Why is Genesis such an important book in Scripture? It gives the kind of seed, the genesis of virtually everything that follows.

Secondly, some in the Old Testament themselves drew a distinction or saw a distinction.

Again, not using the terms ceremonial and civil and so forth, but consider

David in Psalm 51, right? What does he say? You do not desire sacrifice.

And also, you do not delight in burnt offering. He's not saying, I am now free from that commandment of offering them.

But David seemed to understand in some deeper sense that there's a lot more at stake here.

There is that fundamental moral precept which transcends the ceremonial and the civil law.

And Reisinger actually makes the comment that in the precepts of the moral law, we find the goal of all the other laws.

Wouldn't you agree with that? And if so, how does the ceremonial law, I'm going to throw it back at you, feed or reveal that and support those precepts of the moral law?

Yeah, Reisinger, it's a great point. And we've been calling it maybe inorganic or a living connection between these three classifications of Mosaic law.

The moral law is the heart or the foundation, the soil, and everything else is coming from that.

How is that? Well, the civil law clearly is an application in a nation of the principles of loving

God and loving your neighbor. Yeah, I mean, that's very clear. Yeah, so we love our neighbor. Therefore, we need to treat him in a certain way.

And there needs to be a law that says that so that we don't just kind of wander around saying, well,

I feel like this is pretty loving. But then what about the ceremonial? Well, the ceremonial law exists to really to clearly demonstrate that the moral law has been broken.

And having been broken, what is the penalty of that? In a sense, the ceremonial law helps us to take the moral law seriously, because the only way that a failure to keep one of the moral laws of God, the only way that can be made right is death.

So that's the punishment. And then, of course, how can a holy

God who just who rescued a people out of Egypt gives them these laws, knowing they're a stiff necked people?

You remember that they worship the golden calf, even while God is giving the law to Moses on the mountain.

These people that have been promised 400 years before that they would exist, they would come from Abraham, they would be brought out of Egypt, they would be

God's people, they would be placed in a land of their own. Yet they're unholy.

So how can they ever enjoy belonging to a holy God? Why? Why isn't every moment a moment of terror?

And the reason is the ceremonial law has provided a way for faith to be expressed.

I come to God giving this lamb or this goat or this bird, because I am trusting ultimately

I'm obeying him. But the faith there is I trust in the sacrifice he will present that he has a plan for washing the sins that these animals can't.

Yeah. And there again, I think you've got this really good picture. It is just a shadow, but it's a picture of how temporary the ceremonial law is, as you alluded to.

It really is extraordinary that the immortal ancient of days would give us something that is intended to be temporary.

But the fact that year after year you have to come and repeat those sacrifices strongly suggests that they aren't adequate.

They don't really bring that perfection, that total restoration that we desperately need and without which we really lost.

And so the picture of the ceremonial law being temporary always intended to be set aside.

The fact that, as Hebrews again reminds us, the blood of bulls and goats can never really atone for the sins of man against the holy

God. And so, didn't we touch in a past episode on the purpose of the law, the

Old Testament law, is always to point us to the need for the Savior, the great high priest, the

Lamb of God, who alone can take away the sins of the world. And so it seems to me, back in that notion of how

Scripture is unified, that it's this beautiful, seamless garment when Christ comes in the fullness of time, he completely fulfills.

And of course, we're told that he fulfills that law, that ceremonial law in particular.

And let me just, as a footnote, add from the modern legal perspective about the civil law.

To this day, we still cite back to the

Old Testament civil law examples as principles for how our modern law should be interpreted and applied.

So the timelessness of the principle points back to the timelessness of that moral law, though we don't talk about, you know, not muzzling the ox as a law today.

But those principles really are timeless and really are day by day being applied in our own modern legal system.

So yeah, that's a great point. The timeless moral law, which forms that seed of the judicial law, of the civil law, that principle within it, because it is related to the moral law, it can be applied in every generation, in every nation, every corner of the earth, and a nation would be wise to do that.

Although it is not binding in the same way specifically, which is given to Israel, which was a theocratic nation.

And we remember when Christ, you know, speaks of the kingdom being taken from the Jews. We know, you know, in the destruction of the temple, all of those things became very apparent that Israel, in that sense, has come to an end, even though they still exist ethnically.

But that role, that they are the people of God, you know, now we have that wonderful grafting on of the

Gentiles. Yeah. One other passage, let me just throw in here for support, proof, if you will, of the end of at least the ceremonial law.

Romans 10 .4. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes, right?

I mean, how much more clearly can the New Testament proclaim that that really is a temporary, meant -to -expire sort of provision for us in that day?

Yeah, and toward the end of the chapter, he explains that one of the reasons he gives for the end of the ceremonial and civil laws is that they ran their course, their function came to an end.

They don't still have a purpose in themselves, but the moral law does still have a purpose.

And you just mentioned that Christ is the end of the law. Well, someone might say, well, yes, Christ is the end of the moral law too. So because he satisfied the law with his perfect obedience and satisfied the curse of the law at the cross, taking the death that we had earned, taking our paycheck, then therefore, even the moral law has come to an end in the person of Christ.

And now we just, maybe we just follow Christ or we just love Christ. But I think, and especially when you read

Paul, it's easy to come to that conclusion, but I think that would be, I think that would be maybe, it would be,

I think it's inaccurate, but I think it would be kind of a shallow application because I think what Paul's dealing with in that instance is, if you as a

Jew, which he's dealing with, Jews in the church who are saying to the Christian, you've got Jesus, that's wonderful.

Now just add all of our laws and you'll have it, have all of it. So I think what Paul's saying is you who have abused the law and turned it into a ladder to climb up to God, to justify yourselves.

We are the Jews. We don't act the way you people do. So we're okay with God. Circumcision, belonging to Abraham and keeping these rules.

That's all we need. They may need a savior, not us. That abuse of the law or that idea that the law could be used to make yourself, to justify yourself before a holy

God, that has come to an end. You know, that is dead. The law cannot justify you.

But does the moral law have any ongoing value? And it does. And, and Reisinger talks about that.

He says the purpose of the other laws ended, but the purpose of the moral law or the 10 commandments does not pass away.

And he just gives the quick list. The moral law informs everybody of the holy nature and will of God.

It informs all people of their duty to God and their neighbor and to bind them to walk according to that pattern.

It convinces sinners of their inability to keep the law. Or, you know, it shows, it exposes where sin exists and thereby drives them to Christ.

It humbles sinners by showing them the sinful pollution, even of their nature, their heart, their lives.

And that, thus, he says, helps them gain a clear sight of their need for Christ and the perfection of his obedience.

He goes on to say, the moral law shows true believers how much they are bound to Christ for his fulfilling of the law for them.

And thus it makes them more thankful to him for all he has done for them. And finally, it gives true believers an objective standard of righteousness, thus directing them to the right road to travel, though it does not in itself, by itself, the law gives no strength for that journey.

That comes from the Spirit. And one other thing about Paul and the unfair accusations that he was antinomian.

If, in fact, he believed that the law really did end, the moral law had no more purpose, why in the world does he live such a sacrificial, holy, blameless life before Christ?

I mean, it would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? And so I think you have to, his own life is a great testament to the fact that the moral law did not end in the sense of being a friend to the believer, not being an accuser.

Well, we'll end our episode today with the kind of a dual warning, a warning, maybe calling for balance in our interpretation of law.

At the end of this chapter, Reisinger points out that if we don't realize that these three classifications of law, though they are helpful classifications, it does not mean that there is a sharp distinction.

He said, you wouldn't want to read the Bible like Deuteronomy and say, okay, so the verse I just read, was that moral law?

Was that civil law? Or was that ceremonial law? That's not really the way it works.

So because of, we already mentioned, because of that kind of interwoven, organic connection where the moral law forms the heart of all three, or we could say where the character of God forms the heart of all three, we don't want to kind of create a false paradigm or a false grid that we put over the

Bible and say, we need to be able to chop everything into three categories. But he says, on the other hand, if you ignore the distinctions and the essence that we see in the

New Testament, where essentially civil law has been laid aside and ceremonial law has been completed in Christ and therefore laid aside, but moral law continues to be brought to bear upon the

Christians, if you ignore those distinctions, then you can become very confused.

And he says, what you end up then having is either someone saying, okay, so if there are no distinctions at all, then there's just one giant lump of law.

And law, Paul tells us, has been put away in Christ. So nothing from the

Old Testament moral law applies. Or on the other hand, you say, and I have met people that have taken this approach.

I don't see those distinctions in the Old Testament spelled out exactly the way that you've said it. So I'm going to say there are no distinctions.

And therefore, all the old covenant laws are brought forward. And we kind of need to be

Christian plus Jewish. That would be even better, you know, and so we need to bring all of them forward.

Both of those would be errors that are rooted in a wrong understanding of the distinction between the moral, ceremonial, and civil aspects of the

Sinaitic law. And we'll talk next week about another set of difficulties, those that stem from the issue of how the law relates to Christian liberty.

And what about antinomianism? So we hope that you'll be able to be with us next week.