Samuel Bolton (a Westminster divine) is my favorite writer on how the moral law relates to the gospel. He makes some brilliant turns here to explain what’s been traditionally called the third use of the moral law:
We look next at the case of those who are called Antinomians. Just as the Papists set up the law for justification, so the Antinomians decry the law for sanctification. We claim to be free from the curses of the law; they would have us free from the guidance, from the commands of the law. We say we are free from the penalties, but they would abolish the precepts of the law. They tell us that we make a false mixture together of Christ and Moses, and that we mingle law and Gospel together. How unjustly they lay this charge against us, let men of understanding judge. We cry down the law in respect of justification, but we set it up as a rule of sanctification. The law sends us to the Gospel that we may be justified; and the Gospel sends us to the law again to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified.
I’ve written about this before HERE and HERE, but here’s another angle on it. Calvin on 2 Corinthians 1:5:
Verse 5
2 Corinthians 1:5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
For as the sufferings of Christ abound — This statement may be explained in two ways — actively and passively. If you take it actively, the meaning will be this: “The more I am tried with various afflictions, so much the more resources have I for comforting others.” I am, however, more inclined to take it in a passive sense, as meaning that God multiplied his consolations according to the measure of his tribulations. David also acknowledges that it had been thus with him:
According to the multitude, says he, of my anxieties within me,
thy consolations have delighted my soul. (Psalms 94:19.)
In Paul’s words, however, there is a fuller statement of doctrine; for the afflictions of the pious he calls the sufferings of Christ, as he says elsewhere, that he fills up in his body what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ. (Colossians 1:24.)
The miseries and vexations, it is true, of the present life are common to good and bad alike, but when they befall the wicked, they are tokens of the curse of God, because they arise from sin, and nothing appears in them except the anger of God and participation with Adam, which cannot but depress the mind. But in the mean time believers are conformed to Christ, and bear about with them in their body his dying, that the life of Christ may one day be manifested in them. (2 Corinthians 4:10).
Samuel Bolton states a similar idea in The True Bounds of Christian Freedom:
…God has mercy for ‘can-nots’, but none for ‘will-nots’. God can distinguish between weakness and wickedness. While you are under the law, this weakness is your wickedness, a sinful weakness, and therefore God hates it. Under the Gospel He looks not upon the weakness of the saints as their wickedness, and therefore He pities them. Sin makes those who are under the law the objects of God’s hatred. Sin in a believer makes him the object of God’s pity. Men, you know, hate poison in a toad, but pity it in a man. In the one it is their nature, in the other their disease. Sin in a wicked man is as poison in a toad; God hates it and him; it is the man’s nature. But sin in a child of God is like poison in a man; God pities him. He pities the saints for sins and infirmities, but hates the wicked. It is the nature of the one, the disease of the other.
The main take-away I got from Calvin today is that God the Father somehow views the sufferings of his people as their share in the sufferings of Christ. In other words, the Father poured his wrath out upon Jesus in his suffering so that he could sympathize with us in our suffering. He looks at us in our suffering as he would have looked at Jesus had our sin not been imputed to him. He sees our failings and pains as weakness, not as wickedness. In doing so, he is the “God of all comfort.”
Therefore Peter Martyr did well resemble the Decalogue to the ten Predicaments, that, as there is nothing that has a being in nature, but what may be reduced to one of those ten; so neither is there any Christian duty, but what is comprehended in one of these, that is, consequentially, or reductively.
Here’s another talk I gave recently if you’d like to hear me discuss my take on the doctrine of sanctification. What role does the Law play in sanctification? How do we put sin to death? How do we become more holy? Listen and you’ll hear what I believe to be the Bible’s answer:
“So there remains a Sabbathrest for the people of God. For the Onewho has entered His rest has himselfalso rested from his works, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:9-10).
The Law Written on the Tablet of the Heart: Image from Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (Banner of Truth)
Update: See Part 2 (The Sabbath in the Covenant of Works) HERE.
John Owen makes a distinction between ‘moral’ and ‘Mosaical’ elements in the fourth commandment:
For whereas some have made no distinction between the Sabbath as moral and as Mosaical, unless it be merely in the change of the day, they have endeavored to introduce the whole practice required on the latter into the Lord’s day (p. 441).
In the above quote, he is making the point that he believes the Christian interpretation of the fourth (sabbath) commandment which requires the entire commandment to be seen as presently binding is wrong. He sees, in the fourth commandment, two distinct elements: the moral and the Mosaical. The moral essence of the command remains binding: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8). The Mosaical elements, which are ‘explicatory’ of the commandment in the distinct setting in which they are given to Israel are no longer in force: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work,10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex. 20:9-11).
He explains:
It is by all confessed that the command of the Sabbath, in the renewal of it in the wilderness, was accommodated unto the pedagogical state of the church of the Israelites. There were also such additions made unto it, in the manner of its observance and the sanction of it, as might adapt its observation unto their civil and political estate…So was it to bear a part in that ceremonial instruction which God in all his dealings with them intended. To this end also the manner of the delivery of the whole law and the preservation of its tables in the ark were designed. And divers expressions in the explicatory parts of the decalogue have the same reason and foundation. For there is mention of fathers and children to the third and fourth generation, and of their sins, in the second commandment; of the land given to the people of God, in the fifth; of servants and handmaids, in the tenth. Shall we therefore say that the moral law was not before given unto mankind, because it had a peculiar delivery, for special ends and purposes, unto the Jews? (p. 314).
This view is predicated on the idea that the original Sabbath command was a part of the pre-Fall (Adamic) covenant of works. We will deal with that issue in another post (Update: see HERE). For our present purpose here, I will draw from a contemporary of Owen (and a Westminster Divine): Samuel Bolton. Bolton held a very similar view to the nature of Old Testament Law. He describes the relationship of the moral and Mosaical (which he divides into two parts, ceremonial and judicial; these have also regularly been called ‘ceremonial’ and ‘civil’) in this way:
The ceremonial law was an appendix to the first table of the moral law. It was an ordinance containing precepts of worship for the Jews when they were in their infancy…As for the judicial law, which was an appendix to the second table, it was an ordinance containing precepts concerning the government of the people in things civil…(The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, p. 56).
I have written on Bolton’s interpretation HERE. In that post, I shared a diagram (that I created, poorly I might add) that summarizes Bolton’s view:
Here is the explanation: the great commandment and the second which is ‘like unto it’ (Matthew 22:37-39) are further elaborated in the moral law of the 10 Commandments (or to put it another way, ‘Love God’ and ‘Love your neighbor’ serve as a summary of the moral law). The Moral Law is then applied specifically to Israel by way of the Ceremonial and Civil Laws (which Bolton likens to appendices, something added after the initial laws). The Cleanliness laws are placed in the middle of the appendices, between the Civil and Ceremonial, because they can fall into either or both categories (see the original post linked above for further explanation).
With this in mind, what we find in Owen is this: he believes that appendices to the commandments not only exist after the initial giving of the 10 Commandments, but in the giving of the 10 Commandments themselves. Restating the relevant parts of the quotation above relating to ‘Mosaical’ (Ceremonial/Civil) additions to the Moral Law:
There were also such additions made unto it, in the manner of its observance and the sanction of it, as might adapt its observation unto their civil and political estate…
He lists a few examples of such additions:
…There is mention of fathers and children to the third and fourth generation, and of their sins, in the second commandment; of the land given to the people of God, in the fifth; of servants and handmaids, in the tenth. Shall we therefore say that the moral law was not before given unto mankind, because it had a peculiar delivery, for special ends and purposes, unto the Jews?
While this interpretation might seem strange upon first reading, upon careful review it will be clear that Christians have always made such a distinction (and continue to make such a distinction) in parts of the 10 Commandments. For example, consider the 2nd Commandment (according to the Protestant numbering of the Commandments):
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.(Ex. 20:4-6).
The NAS, for instance, makes the point clear by translating ‘carved image’ as an ‘idol.’ Christians understand that the commandment applies to more than carved images. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, for instance, describes the requirements of the second commandment in this way:
Q. 50. What is required in the second commandment?
A. The second commandment requireth the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his word.
Q. 51. What is forbidden in the second commandment?
A. The second commandment forbiddeth the worshiping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his word.
We also, at least it seems to me, tend to stray away from the idea of direct, judicial generational curses, realizing that this element of the commandment was tied to the Mosaic administration of the Law.
Next, consider the fifth commandment:
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you (Ex. 20:12).
The land promise tied to obedience is, at least, radically changed under the New Covenant. It is clear that this promise (based on obedience) was in direct reference to the Promised Land of Canaan.
So then, Owen argues that the the majority of what is known as the fourth commandment is essentially an appendix meant for the children of Israel under the Mosaic Covenant; those elements, he will argue, are fulfilled in Christ, while the moral essence of the commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,’ abides.
We will look at the rest of the argument in detail in future posts. Subjects included will be Owen’s view of the Mosaic Law (with the Sabbath in particular) as a restatement of the Covenant of Works, how Christ’s Law-keeping, death, and resurrection relate to the Sabbath command in relation to the Covenant of Works, and how Christ, fulfilling the Law, begins, in the resurrection, a new creation with a new (Christian) Sabbath – the Lord’s Day.
The ceremonial law was an appendix to the first table of the moral law. It was an ordinance containing precepts of worship for the Jews when they were in their infancy…As for the judicial law, which was an appendix to the second table, it was an ordinance containing precepts concerning the government of the people in things civil…’ (The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, p. 56).
Taking this understanding of the ceremonial and civil laws as appendixes to the 10 Commandments, and taking Jesus’ declaration that the summary of the Law is ‘love God and love your neighbor’, we might diagram the Law in this way:
There are a couple of things about this diagram that need to be clarified. First, the fifth commandment is included in the first table of the law as pertaining to the honoring of authority (God’s authority being supreme). This is debatable, but not necessarily important for the current discussion. Second, the cleanliness law (purity laws dealing with the clean/unclean distinction) are set in the middle between ceremonial and civil law because cleanliness laws often pertained to both. Remember that the priests served not only as officials of worship (ceremonial) but also as health officials (civil) in some respects.
This paradigm (summary of the 10 Commandments>the 10 Commandments>the appendixes to the 10 Commandments) is a helpful grid through which we may pass any law as we determine its continuing validity. But before we get to that in detail we need to discuss the fulfillment of the Law in Christ. The teaching of Jesus Christ in the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that the moral essence of the law (the summary of the 10 Commandments and the 10 Commandments themselves) remain intact (cf. Mat. 5:17-18, 19:17-19, 22:37-40). Yet, while the moral essence of the Law remains, it is clear from the New Testament that in other areas there has been a broad change.
These changes all relate to the fulfillment of the appendixes of the law (see diagram above) and the laws relating to cleanness and uncleanness. In other words the moral core of the Law remains while the external, exact forms of keeping the Law are altered under the administration of the New Covenant. Relating this to the ceremonial and civil law this means that the external forms of worship and government have been drastically altered under the New Covenant reign of Christ. Here is a brief example:
Leviticus 17:3 If any one of the house of Israel kills an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or kills it outside the camp, 4 and does not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as a gift to the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD, bloodguilt shall be imputed to that man. He has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.
John 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
This law has obviously changed, for we no longer bring offerings to an earthly tabernacle, Christ being the fulfillment (anti-type) of the tabernacle (cf.Mat. 1:23; John 1:14, 2:19; 1 Cor. 3:16ff., Eph. 2:21, Rev. 21:22, etc).
As for the laws of cleanness and uncleanness it appears that the New Testament teaching on the subject is that those laws have been entirely fulfilled by the work of Christ, as he takes all uncleanness upon himself, offering his own cleanness to those who are united to him by faith:
John 13:10 Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
Mark 7:18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” ( Thus he declared all foods clean.)
Ezekiel 36:25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
Acts 10:9 ¶ The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. 10 And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance 11 and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. 12 In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. 13 And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” 15 And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.”
Acts 11:9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ 10 This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. 11 And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. 12 And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house.
1 Corinthians 7:14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
Romans 14:14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
Hebrews 9:13 For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Titus 1:15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”-
In summary of what we’ve said so far, the moral essence of the law is binding (summary of the 10 Commandments and 10 commandments), the appendixes to the moral law (ceremonial and civil) must be evaluated in light of whether or not a particular law has been fulfilled by Christ or altered in its New Covenant application, and the Clean/Unclean Laws have all been fulfilled in Christ. That means that it is very easy to deal with straight-forward moral commands and laws dealing with cleanness and uncleanness. The former are still in force the latter are all fulfilled. The difficulty then is in dealing with those tricky appendixes. This is where we can get into trouble as interpreters, but this is also where our interpretation grid comes in handy.
Since the ceremonial and civil laws are basically appendixes to the 10 Commandments, and the 10 Commandments are summarized further as Love God, Love Neighbor, we should attempt to take those ceremonial and civil laws and locate them in the 10 Commandments and its summary. This will boil the precepts down to their moral essence. From there we can ask whether or not the essence of the command is fulfilled in Christ and determine if the individual laws have any modern application for us as Christians.
Let’s take one example. I’ve had to deal with this passage because some have interpreted it simply to mean that a woman should not wear pants:
Deuteronomy 22:5 ¶ The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
Using our grid, we need to locate this command in our grid. First, we know it’s not a cleanliness law. Second, then we can ask, ‘what part of the 10 Commandments is this law applying?’ The only law that makes sense is the 9th commandment (‘You shall not bear false witness’) because the general issue is deception – pretending to be something that you are not (i.e. a man looking like a woman, a woman looking like a man). This is therefore an issue of loving your neighbor, and the moral force of it is still relevant. How then can we honor this commandment? Some would say it is as simply as ‘a woman shouldn’t wear pants.’ But this is a very strict application of a rather broad rule. The moral force of the commandment is basically that a woman should not appear to be a man, or try to look like a man, and vice versa for men. Drag queens are breaking the 9th Commandment.
If I were to preach Deuteronomy 22:5, this should be the thrust of my application – don’t try to look like someone of the opposite sex for this is deceptive, untrue, and a violation of the 9th Commandment. The good news is that while the moral essence of the law is still in force, Christ has paid the price for our breaking of the 9th Commandment as offers forgiveness through penitent faith.
Another good example of how this grid works pertains to the gleaning laws of the Old Testament. As a part of the appendix to the civil law they relate back to the 8th Commandment (‘You shall not steal’). Those who refused to leave the crops in the corners of their fields for gleaners were taking what God had declared not to belong to them and, thus, in essence, stealing. And at the back of that stealing is the moral issue of coveting – they wanted what was not legally theirs (i.e. coveted) and so they stole it. The result of this is that they were not loving their neighbors. The moral force of such laws are still binding despite external changes – we should honor the poor and use our money to do good.
Matthew 5:42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
So, how can you interpret Levitical Law as a Christian?
1. If it is a cleanliness law it is fulfilled in Christ.
2. If it is a strictly moral law, relating to the 10 Commandments or the summary of the 10 Commandments, it is still in force.
3. If it is a ceremonial or civil law it must be examined in the light of New Testament teaching and then, if it is not explicitly fulfilled in the New Testament, it must be related back to the moral law to find its proper contemporary application.
In all these areas the Law is meant to point us to our need of Christ, but for the Christian, having discovered that need, and believed upon him, we will find in the Levitical Law wise and impactful ways of applying the moral law to our current situations. Look at it this way – the individual levitical laws give us angles from which to approach the 10 Commandments, and therefore angles from which we can apply them both to the unbeliever in need of justification and to the believer striving for sanctification.
Update: 8/27/14 I found a great quote (HERE)(about theonomy) that summarizes Bolton’s view well:
This constitutes an approach to the nature of the civil law very different from Calvin and the rest of the Reformed tradition, which sees the civil law as God’s application of his eternal standards to the particular exigencies of his people.
“God’s application of his eternal standards to the particular exigencies of his people” is another way of calling the civil (and ceremonial) law ‘appendixes’ to the moral law. This is precisely how we must view the law today: it is to be applied to the particular exigencies of God’s people under the administration of the New Covenant.
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