Ask 10 Christians about the importance of the Old Testament “law”
in their lives and you may get 10 answers!
The following summary of the law’s place in the Christian
life comes in a book called “Paul and the Fulfillment of the
Law” by Thomas Schreiner. It’s not all that can be said
– and it’s not to be absorbed on a quick read – but
it’s a helpful page.
“According to Paul, the Mosaic covenant has reached its
fulfillment in Jesus Christ. This fulfillment means that the Mosaic
covenant no longer is in force. The age of consummation and the
era of the new covenant have arrived. The commandments in the
Mosaic law are still part of the Word of God, but they no longer
function in the same way now that the fulfillment of what the
Old Testament promised has come. For example, physical circumcision
pointed to the spiritual circumcision of the heart, and the reality
of the latter displaces the need for the former. Old Testament
sacrifices pointed to the sacrifice of Christ, which definitively
accomplishes what Old Testament sacrifices merely anticipated.
Neither are the purity laws incumbent on the church, since they
signaled the need for holiness that is now a reality through the
work of Jesus Christ...
How does the fulfillment of the Mosaic law in Christ relate to
the moral law? Many scholars misunderstand Paul’s theology
of freedom and argue that the moral norms of the law no longer
play any role in the Christian life. But the fulfillment of the
law in Christ means that the Spirit enables believers to keep
the moral norms of the law. When Paul says that the law kills
and does not give life, he does not mean that the presence of
moral norms or ethical absolutes dampens life in the Spirit. If
Paul believed this, then he blatantly contradicted his own theology.
His ethical parenesis is full of “oughts” and “shoulds”.
Freedom from law for Paul does not mean freedom from “ought”.
It means freedom from the power of sin which uses the law to produce
death. Death and sin are the result when the law confronts an
unregenerate person. In other words, the law without the Spirit
leads to death. But those who have the Holy Spirit have the power
to keep the law. The new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah and Ezekiel
is fulfilled when the Spirit comes and the law is written on the
heart. The moral norms of the law can now be kept because of the
internal working of the Spirit of God. The law is no longer just
an external standard; it is also an inward delight.
To put it another way, love comprises the heart and soul of Paul’s
ethic. Those who have the Spirit of God are filled with love,
which is the fulfillment of the law. The centrality of love in
Paul is crucial because he recognized that no law could adequately
describe the kind of righteousness demanded for believers. Love
goes beyond what can be specified and calculated by law. It delves
into motivation, which law seldom touches. People can keep the
law in an external sense and still not be motivated by love. Nonetheless,
even though love resides at the centre of Paul’s ethic, this
does not mean that love and law are polar opposites. The law is
a partial description of how love expresses itself. The law guards
us from sentimentality and vagueness in a society that knows all
too well how to justify almost any course of action by an appeal
to love.”
