Are We Still to Obey the Law? | Theocast Clips

The Ceremonial Law as Type, Shadow, and Fulfillment

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. We can see how all these arcs of types and shadows and 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 125, 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. 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, you already mentioned, but he talks about this in Ephesians 3, he talks about this in 1 Corinthians 2, 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, the Gentiles meaning the rest of the world.

Christian Liberty and the Abrogation of the Ceremonial Law

That's right. I think we've done a decent job there on the ceremonial law. 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.

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. 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, Creation, and the Covenant of Works

The moral law, it's critical that we begin with creation. When God made Adam, he wrote a law of comprehensive obedience into humanity. 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 ten commandments, in ten 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.

The Transcendent Moral Law from Adam to Moses

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.

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. There are multiple things that we're going to talk about here.

The Moral Law, Its Uses, and Christ's Fulfillment

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.