The Law - Part 2

1^st June 2013

We read this last week:

Matthew 12v1-2
At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some ears of corn and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath."

We looked briefly at why the Pharisees might have reacted as they did. Jesus now responds:

Matthew 12v3-8
He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread - which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

In Matthew 22v34-40, Jesus taught that the greatest commandment in the Law is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Deuteronomy 6v5) and said the second greatest commandment is "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Leviticus 19v18). Then he said "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.". The two things God wants from us is that we love Him and that we love other people. All the other the Laws are subsidiary to those two. The rest of the law tells us how to love God and how to love our neighbour.

Jesus said "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread - which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests." He was saying that David was right to see love for his companions - providing food for them when they were hungry - was a higher principle than keeping the consecrated bread for the priests alone. That's dangerous talk, isn't it? That means that we can't just work out the exact meaning of each individual law in the Torah and follow it (as the Pharisees tried to do). Instead, we must interpret the Torah in terms of what is the most loving thing to do in any situation. And that's dangerous because some Christian people (and others) might try to use that idea to justify all kinds of deviant behaviour.

And Jesus said, "haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent?". This, too, is dangerous. Jesus is saying that even the Torah itself contradicts a strictly literal interpretation of its own words. Might not some Christians and other people use this idea to claim that we can ignore the laws we find inconvenient?

Yes.

But it's no more dangerous than becoming Pharisees, who think a literalistic interpretation of the Bible can be an adequate substitute for love and mercy.

So we find that we need to find a way to obey the Bible that is neither legalism - the Pharisaical construction of rules and regulations that ensure we obey the exact words of every individual Law, while ignoring the very purpose of the law, which is love, nor anarchy - each of us doing what is right in our own eyes (or what conforms to the fashionable morality of the society around us) while ignoring any law that we don't like.

I'll look at that next time.