January 28, 2024 | by Pastor Peter

Changing Views on the Law

Many of the laws we read in the Old Testament seem odd to us. We don’t encourage people to put tassels on the corners of their garments. We don’t prohibit the consumption of pork. We don’t require younger brothers to marry their sisters-in-law if their older brother dies without producing an heir. And we don’t prohibit mixed fabrics, like poly-cotton blend.

We have an understanding that certain laws from the Old Testament are binding while others aren’t. Some people try to distinguish between moral laws (still applicable) and ceremonial laws (no longer applicable). But the law doesn’t categorize rules this way, and besides, the part about marrying your sister-in-law is a moral law (keeping her from becoming destitute) not ceremonial, and we ignore it anyway. So how should we understand this evolving commitment to some rules and not others?

In the law itself, Moses points out that the rules aren’t complete. He says God will send a prophet (understood by most to be a line of prophets) who will also offer binding instructions 

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ Then the Lord replied to me, ‘They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ (Deuteronomy 18:15-20, NIV)

It seems the law isn’t a timeless and unchanging set of moral truths, but something that needs to adapt to changing situations. The prophets are going to help Israel to understand God’s expectations in a changing world. So God sends the Israelites prophets like Samuel, Elijah and Jeremiah to help them discern how to live as their situation changes.

Interpreting The Bible In Self-Interested Ways

Even though the Law contained this provision for being updated, the most powerful Jews in Jesus’ day—The Jewish priestly caste who formed a sort of aristocracy—refused to acknowledge that the later additions to the Hebrew Scriptures (the prophets and the writings) were legitimately scripture. The priests were powerful because they stood as middlemen between God and the people. However, the prophets downplayed the significance of the sacrificial system that gave the priests their power. So they had an interest in holding up the Torah at the expense of the prophets, so that’s what they did.

Of course, when Moses speaks of a prophet who will come, the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy is Jesus. So Jesus speaks with authority from God, but the same people who rejected the authority of the other prophets question his authority. But the crowds, who may not have the same education, but who don’t have a vested interest in dismissing Jesus, understand that Jesus has authority. We see this in a story from very early in Jesus’ ministry:

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. (Mark 1:21-18, NIV)

Jesus doesn’t appeal to the Torah for his authority, rather he teaches by his own authority. This seems audacious, but Jesus’ miracles (like delivering the man in this story from an unclean spirit) vindicate Jesus’ authority, making it difficult for people to write him off. If the regular people can see this, the religious leaders should see it too. They just don’t want to, so they harden their heart against Jesus.

Just as the scribes and priests interpreted God’s will according to their self-interest, we must guard against the same temptation. If we are well served by the status quo, we may try to keep the story from moving forward.

Keeping the Story Static

But if Jesus is God’s ultimate self-revelation, does that mean God has nothing more to tell us? So do we just ‘do as Jesus tells us’ without any need for interpretation? Not at all. Our situation keeps changing so being faithful to God requires new direction from God. Just like Moses said others would come and pass on more instructions from God, so Jesus tells us that someone else will continue to instruct us: the Holy Spirit. At the Last Supper Jesus says:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-14, NIV)

He’s acknowledging that the church needs more instruction than we could have provided during his short ministry time.

Why wasn’t Jesus able to teach everything? Righteousness is really about right-relatedness. So doing the righteous is dependent on all the nuance and complexity of human relationships. To add more difficulty, the same action can be loving or selfish depending on the motivation of the one who does it. If a husband knows his wife wants more chances to get exercise so he buys her an exercise bike, it’s an act of love. If he thinks she’s becoming fat and he wants to make sure he’s not seen with a fat wife, then the same gift is an act of selfishness. So if right and wrong are so dependent on the situation, how could Jesus ever possibly hope to lay out all the things we’re supposed to do and all the reasons we’re supposed to do them? It’s too complicated. We don’t need a library of Jesus’ dictated thoughts on every conceivable topic. Instead, we need to hear from Jesus. 

That’s what the Holy Spirit is. Our way of hearing from Jesus, so that our faithfulness can adapt to the situation in which we find ourselves. But this idea of adapting might make us uneasy. If we have to respond to the Holy Spirit rather than just doing what the Bible says (like it’s an instruction manual) then people can do whatever they want and say that the Holy Spirit told them to. This happens. But the solution to a bad interpretation of scripture isn’t to try to avoid interpretation (and necessarily to try to live like a first-century Roman subject). Rather we need to interpret God’s will well. Are there some tools we can use to double-check whether we’re interpreting well?

Tools for Discerning God’s Heart

Consistent with the Example of Jesus

First, while Jesus can’t tell us everything about how we ought to live in a modern world, what the Spirit tells us must be consistent with who Jesus is. In his ministry, Jesus teaches his followers to be hospitable, humble, generous, dependent on God, pure (but humble about it) and to serve others in love. While the specifics of how this works itself out in our cultural context are new, the values remain the same. So if we think the Spirit is leading us to do things that are inconsistent with the values Jesus teaches and exemplifies, then it’s probably not the Spirit.

Counter-Cultural vs. Self-Justifying

Jesus’ kingdom is often counter-cultural. But this isn’t to say that everything counter-cultural is from God. Deciding that everyone should wear Speedo bathing suits to church would be counter-cultural, but I doubt that that’s a direction the Spirit would lead. At the same time, the spirit doesn’t challenge everything about our culture (because some parts of culture are either good or neutral). But the Holy Spirit often challenges us in ways that aren’t comfortable. He often pushes back on our cherished beliefs and values. 

One sign that it’s the Spirit is often that the Spirit is not self-justifying. The Spirit doesn’t call us to increase the power of the already powerful the the expense of the less powerful. This dynamic is often present when people talk about ‘biblical manhood and womanhood.’ Male teachers often define biblical womanhood in a way that reinforces their privilege (the wife must do the tedious housework, and needs to be sexually available to him at all times). At the same time, these people often fail to talk about how the increased authority they should have should lead them to love their wives more sacrificially. So discussion of male headship often becomes a way of using religion as a justification for the powerful to get their own way. This isn’t the way of Jesus.

For Jesus, the powerful are always given power so that they can surrender that power for the sake of others. As Jesus says, “The Son of Man [himself] came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Interpreting in Community

Our culture is individualistic. English has a single second-person pronoun for singular and plural words. (So when I read “you” in scripture, I’m not sure if it’s a command to individuals or to communities). So we often take promises or commands given to groups and assume they are given to individuals. When Jesus says that the Spirit will guide you in all truth, the “you” in the original Greek is plural. The Spirit helps us discern what is true when we come together in Jesus’ name.

Practically, this might mean that when we have an important decision to make, we run it by other, wise Christians. It might mean that as a church, we don’t rely on the pastor to decide how we engage our community, but that we talk it over and decide by prayer and consensus building. We do well when we consider the perspective of Christians from other countries, and even Christians from other eras (we can read the writings of Christians as they wrestled with similar questions in the past). As we discern where God is leading in the community, we’re less likely to mistake our own agenda or our own prejudices as the leading of the Holy Spirit.