We have been taking a stroll around hell, judgement, the Sabbath and ideas related to these things in advance of the June issue of The Briefing. First we looked at why good people go to hell and bad people go to heaven. Then JI Packer explained why it is perilous to ignore Satan. Then Greg Clarke revealed who the antichrist is. This week, we think about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and how that affects our view of the Sabbath:

The place of the Law in the Christian life is a complex subject. It is not made any easier by the variety of uses of the word ‘law’ in the New Testament. In the New Bible Dictionary article on law, John Murray lists six separate uses of ‘law’ within the New Testament.

Here is not the place to discuss the intricacies of the Bible's use of the word ‘law’. For the purposes of this article, we will use ‘law’ to mean the commands and requirements of the Torah, which Israel was required to keep as part of their covenant relationship with God.

As Christians, we want to know if we are still required to keep the requirements of the law. If so, to what extent? We sense that the full ceremonial and ritual commands no longer apply to us, but what about the so-called moral sections (such as the Ten Commandments)? Are they still applicable? Is it possible to distinguish between the moral, legal and ceremonial aspects of the law?

These are the kinds of questions that bother Christians from time to time—especially in connection with a particular issue such as the Sabbath.

An obsolete law?

There is a consistent strain of teaching in the New Testament that the Old Testament law, with all its rules, is no longer binding on Christians. The law was a gaoler or custodian that was put in charge until Christ came (Gal 3:23-24). Now that Christ has come, we are no longer children in the custody of a guardian; we now have the full rights of sons. We are now free of the law (Gal 4:1-7).

The writer to the Hebrews is also emphatic that the commands and regulations of the Mosaic law are no longer applicable to Christians. We are participants in a new, infinitely superior covenant. We have a better priest, a better tabernacle and a better sacrifice—Jesus. Furthermore, in the new covenant (which was prophesied by Jeremiah), the law is written on our hearts, instead of on slabs of stone. The old covenant has been made “obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb 8:10-13). “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves” (Heb 10:1 cf. Col 2:17).

It is worth pointing out, however, that the Old Testament is not dismissed as a source of instruction for new covenant Christians. Although the gospel is usually the basis for ethical instruction, the Old Testament law is occasionally appealed to: the Deuteronomic command not to muzzle the ox is applied to Christian preachers (1 Cor 9); the Exodus is recounted as a warning not to “set our hearts on evil things as they did” (1 Cor 10:1-11).

Traditionally, Reformed theology (reflected, for example, in Presbyterianism) has emphasized this function of the law as a rule of life for Christians. In Reformed theology, the law has three uses:

• to restrain sin and promote righteousness in the world at large
• to bring man under the conviction of sin and so lead him to Christ
• as a rule of life for believers, reminding them of their duties and leading them in the way of salvation·(see, for example, L Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Banner of Truth, p. 614).

The third use of the law—as being normative for Christian behaviour—is applied (somewhat selectively) to the Old Testament law to yield obligations for the Christian life. The Sabbath, for example, is seen as a norm of Christian behaviour, although its observance is changed to Sunday, ‘the Lord's day’.

Other post-Reformation groups such as the Seventh Day Baptists (and their descendants, the Seventh Day Adventists), insisted that Sabbath-keeping should involve Saturday Observance, not Sunday. And still other descendants of the Reformation took a freer attitude, and regarded one day as good as any other.

As an illustration of how the Old Testament law is to be applied to New Testament Christians, the Sabbath is a case in a point. Let us trace the ‘Sabbath’ theme through the Bible, and see how the relationship between the testaments illuminates our understanding of how ‘Sabbath’ applies to us today.

Read the full article online (2117 words).

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