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Did I catch your attention?  I am half kidding and half serious. 

As a Christian, I occasionally find myself answering questions about the Mosaic law as it relates to our faith in Christ Jesus.  ”Why do Christians pick and choose which laws to follow?”  That’s a common one, which I addressed in detail many years before there were blogs, on my Israel Tour Bible Studies website (toward the bottom).  These days, many discussions involve practical application of the Law for Christians as it relates to our redeemed status, and this is what Exodus 22 to 24 addressed for me yesterday.

One reason the Law is even an even issue for me is that I am meeting more and more Christians who look to Jesus for their conduct.  What would Jesus do?  What did Jesus say to do?  On one hand that is awesome, for there is no better example to follow.  On the other hand, I believe Jesus’ life, as an example of proper conduct, is incomplete for a mere mortal.

The problem is that even while Jesus had a sinless life before His ministry, a life with a job, a home, a temple to attend, etc., that life is generally not recorded in scripture.  With the possible acception of when Mary and Joseph found Him in the Temple at 12 years old, it is only His ministry life that is detailed in the Gospels and elsewhere.  Of course, we all live out our own ministries whether we mean to or not, but that is not what I am referring to. It is the everyday life of provider, congregation member, voter, volunteer, and parent that Jesus provides no example for in the Gospels, though He surely lived many of them out before His ministry as Savior began.  How can we follow that example, when it is probably closer to our everyday life, yet wasn’t recorded?

Don’t get me wrong.  Jesus’ sermons and prayers provide a lot of theological and practical direction for our lives, and it is everything that God intended for Jesus to tell us in scripture.  Everything God wanted recorded in the Gospels was recorded… from four different perspectives even.  I am certainly not criticizing God for leaving out the practical example of Jesus’ pre-ministry life.  No, I have no real complaint to Him.  Rather, I am exhorting the Christian who fails to consider why this example was not recorded.  Let me again stress that God’s Word is complete.  Jesus’ example is complete.  The Gospels are complete.  However, the Christian who uses the Gospels as their sole source for their conduct will lead a life that is incomplete. 

Jesus addressed this in Matthew 5:17 when He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” My studies on “picking and choosing” that I linked to above ultimately hinged on this verse, but I find it appropriate here as well.  What does it mean for Jesus to “fulfill” the law?  Well, in my Israel Tour studies I argued that fulfillment of a law comes when you obey it, or when punishment is meted out for disobeying it.  By taking our punishment for disobeying the law (or failing to live up to it), that law gets fulfilled for us for all time.  However, it does not remove God’s command to the Israelites and their descendents to obey them.

Christians see Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, and say “well you can’t unring that bell.  It’s done. I’m free from the law.”  True enough, but faith in Christ doesn’t unring the bell that God when He gave the law to Moses.  We basically live in within the lingering tones of two holy bells, bells which ring in harmony to each other, not two bells that cancel each other out.

Acknowledging that Jesus’ sacrifice did not cancel out the Mosaic Law is helpful for Jewish Christians who are looking for guidance in their lives.  God gave them the Mosaic law by which to live, and gave them a sacrifice in Jesus by which to make amends for those laws that society, circumstances, faith, and flesh prevent them from living up to.  Laws such as stoning, dietary restrictions, and working on the sabbath are laws that a Jewish Christian are likely not to live up to as they live out their faith, and Jesus has died for their shortcomings; no guilt there, just grace.  However, it is pretty hard to discard the 10 Commandments as well, and be living a life for God.  Worshipping other gods, murdering, and disrepecting your parents are pretty good indicators of someone who doesn’t live for God, and so there remains much of the law that a Jew should live out, even as a Christian.

What then of the gentile Christian, the Christian who was never given the law? the Christian who was redeemed by Christ’s blood, but was never given the Mosaic Law?  What about them?  Well, if they want to live like Christ, which they should, then they should look at the Mosaic Law as a guide book for how He lived.  After all, that’s what Jesus did.

Does this suddently oblige the Christian to live like an orthodox Jew?  Far from it!  Nearly every letter Paul wrote was to the early church that was trying to get gentiles to live as Jews.  Don’t be a Judaizer.  Don’t live like a Judaizer.  Avoid the Judaizers.  These themes pop up over and over agin in Paul’s writings.  Furthermore, Jesus gave us examples for practically applying the law when it appeared to conflict with our common sense regarding what is right.  For example, the Sabbath is holy, but life is more so.  Retaliation is just, but restraint is Godly.  The mistake is to conclude that therefore Christ did not live by the Law.  On the contrary, He not only lived under the Law, but He lived by the Law more perfectly than any Jew before Him or since, teaching us how to live out God’s ideals, without living by them in a legalistic sense that replaces God’s ideals with our own.  That is what Jesus did.

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