The Gospel and the Law
A Discussion about the Emerging Church

The following discussion is between Tony Jones, national coordinator for Emergent Village and Sean McDowell, author of Ethix: Being Bold in a Whatever World.

Tony says:

As you know, Sean, one of the most difficult items of Christian faith that we must navigate is the relationship between the law and the gospel. As with so many other things, we tend to err on one side or the other. The vast majority of Christians, it seems to me, falls on the side of grace and gospel, almost completely neglecting the 600+ laws in the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Old Testament does come up, it’s a nice Psalm or a story of an OT hero.

On the other hand, there’s a type of Christianity alive today in both Protestantism and Catholicism that seems reminiscent of the Pharisees with whom Jesus dealt (and the irony is how often these churches are called, “Grace Church”!). They seem to turn Paul’s exhortations to the churches he planted into a new kind of Mosaic Code. But with Paul’s radical conversion away from his legalistic background, I’m quite sure that he was not trying to impose a new law in place of the old one.

Instead, Paul was trying to make sense of Jesus’ brilliant and baffling statement, “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it,” and it’s with that proclamation that we, too, must wrestle. What does it mean for Jesus to fulfill but not abolish the Law? Every theologian in the Augustinian traditional has struggled mightily with this question.

First, what is the law? We must remember that the “Law” to Jesus was the first five books of our Bible, a.k.a., Torah, the Pentateuch, or the Books of Moses. These books record the covenantal code between God and the Israelites.

And second, it seems clear that we must not abandon, ignore, or otherwise disregard the Law. Instead, we must live in some kind of relationship with the law, even though that’s tricky to the point of being torturous at times. But that’s exactly what Jesus did: he didn’t avoid the Law, but reinterpreted it so that those in his day, and ours, might truly understand it.

Sean says:

As Christians we should rejoice in the Law. It can certainly be abused, as you indicate, but it also reveals the character of God and teaches us how to live. In fact, without the Law it would be difficult to know how to truly love biblically.

In Romans 13:8, 10 Paul says, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” After mentioning four of the Ten Commandments he concludes, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Loving others is the essence of the Christian faith. How do we know how to love? Paul’s answer is simple: obey the law. In other words, if we truly love someone (including God) we won’t deceive, hurt, or take advantage of that person.

Deuteronomy 5:22-24 tells us that the law reveals God’s nature. Therefore, one way to know what God is like is to look at the law! The law reveals that God is holy, just, pure, and loving. Since as believers we desire to live in concert with God’s character, the Law is a guide for living. Our motive is not to earn salvation, for that is solely by grace, but to demonstrate the love of Christ in our hearts.

While the law shows us how to live, it also reveals our sinfulness. Galatians 3:24 says, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” It acts as a mirror revealing our sinfulness and our desperate shortcomings in relation to God’s holiness. The Law is what pulls at the consciences of men, prompting them to seek God’s grace offered in Christ’s sacrificial death. This is why Paul says, “I would not have come to know sin except through the law” (Romans 7:7).

Lastly, I don’t think Jesus “reinterpreted” the Law, Tony. Rather, Jesus correctly pointed out the true meaning of the Law that had been confused by the Pharisee’s false interpretations and applications.

Tony says:

Sean, I have a problem when you say that the Law reveals God’s character to us. To say that, you have to cherry-pick parts of the Torah that you find tasteful (e.g., Don’t commit adultery; Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain) and ignore those that you find distasteful (e.g., Stone homosexuals to death; Don’t eat pork). When the whole corpus of the Law is taken into account, God doesn’t necessarily look holy, just, pure, and loving all the time. Sometimes, God comes across confusing and arbitrary. And that’s a tough God to follow.

That, I think, is the beauty of Jesus. When he talked about the “spirit of the Law,” and when he reminded the Pharisees, for instance, that the Sabbath was created for our benefit and not vice versa, he was providing an alternate interpretation of the Law for the hearers in his day and for us today.

You can say that he was correctly pointing out the “true meaning” of the Law, but in fact he was presenting an alternative that no one, back to Moses, had ever envisioned. Moses couldn’t have imagined Jesus letting the Disciples “off the hook” for plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath.

Of course, Jesus had the authority to do this very thing: to give all of us a new vision of the Law, one that doesn’t erase the Law, but instead puts it in a proper relationship to God’s broader vision for humanity.

So, what I’m saying is that we use Jesus as our exemplar of how to live in proper relationship to the Law. In fact, I think that’s exactly what Paul was trying to do.

Sean says:

To 21st century modern eyes the Law may seem distasteful, but that does not mean it fails to reflect God’s character or that God is arbitrary and confusing. The truth of God always looks like foolishness to the world! When the Law is understood properly in context it points directly to the person of God. The precepts you mentioned do reflect God’s holiness and purity, even though they may offend modern sensibilities.

In Luke 24:44 Jesus says, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Since the time of Moses the Law has spoken of Jesus! Jesus saw his mission as fulfilling the Law. Sure, people may have been unable to anticipate some of the particularities in how he would fulfill the Law, and Jesus did disagree with his contemporaries over its interpretation, but this hardly means he reinterpreted it. Jesus reminded the Pharisees that the Sabbath was made for man precisely because they had lost its original intention.

I think it is a mistake to label the Law “confusing and arbitrary” yet consider the actions of Jesus less offensive. Just as some particular laws may appear detestable to modern eyes, so would the actions of Jesus. One would have to cherry-pick examples of Jesus to avoid such a conclusion. He spoke regularly of hell, called certain people “dogs,” and “hypocrites,” and cleared the Jewish Temple in anger. Jesus hardly would have been considered the non-judgmental, inclusive, tolerant model of love as honored in our culture today.

Tony says:

Sean, I totally agree with you! Jesus is just as offensive as the Law. Offensive, that is, to an outside perspective. Both the Law and Jesus are only really comprehensible from someone who stands on the inside. You might call it a “biblical worldview;” I prefer to call it the “biblical narrative.” In any case, we can only understand Jesus calling people “dogs” or a Levitical command to stone homosexuals within the grand sweep of the total story.

What I’m trying to get at is that I think a lot of Christians are Paul-ophiles. Theirs is a Paulocentric reading of scripture. I’m advocating for a Christocentric reading. We need to read Paul through the lens of Jesus, not the other way around.

My fear is that, as is made clear in the Bible, the chief sin of humankind is idolatry. We’re all in danger of it all the time. I’ve got my idols, and you’ve got yours. What worries me is when I sense that the book of Romans has taken precedence over the four Gospels. And it worries me because I think that turning Paul’s writings into a new law is, in fact, idolatry.

Sean says:

I’m not sure the Gospels should take precedence over Paul’s writings or vice versa. All Scripture is equally inspired and meant to be interpreted in light of the whole. Paul was just as inspired in his theological explanation of Jesus as the Gospel writers are in their historical rendition of his life.

When properly understood, the four Gospels and the writings of Paul perfectly complement each other. The backdrop for Paul’s writings is the Gospels. And the Gospels are enlightened by grasping the meaning of Jesus’ coming, death, and resurrection as expounded by Paul. The key is not to favor one over another, but to keep them in balance.

As you know, Tony, Romans is about freedom and walking in the Spirit. A genuine understanding of the book of Romans leads to a desire to worship Jesus and God the Father.