Alabama, the Ten Commandments, and the Purpose of the Law

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Laying Down the Law in Alabama

Recently, the American state of Alabama passed a law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public schools.

What do I think of this? Hey, I love me some Ten Commandments. My favourite kind of log is the decalogue!

Even so, if I had to choose one group of biblical laws to place in the classroom, it would not be the Ten Commandments; rather, it would be the laws that Jesus himself combined: the Shema and the Love Command.

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ (Deut 6.4). The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev 19.18). There is no commandment greater than these.”

In any case, what precisely is the point of displaying the Ten Commandments in a public school?

I can guarantee you it's not going to have any positive effect upon the behaviour of students. As Paul said in this letter to the Romans “For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Rom 7.7; Exod 20.17; Deut 5.21). While the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom 7.12), the law is also bound up with sin and death (1 Cor 15.56). If righteousness could be gained through the law then the Messiah died for nothing (Gal 2.21).

I cannot help but surmise that the purpose of displaying the Ten Commandments is more ideological than theological. It is a symbolic display of values that do not necessarily epitomise Christianity but which express a certain political vision. It’s like displaying a rainbow flag, it’s a symbol of who is in charge and which brand of politics gets to be hegemonic.

If you wanted to display something that was explicitly Christian surely you would choose not law but gospel, something like John 3.16 or even Romans 5.8, which says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” or maybe even 2 Corinthians 5.21, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”

Of course, this raises two interesting questions: what was the purpose of the law in the biblical story and what is the role of the law in Christian life.

What was the purpose of the law in biblical history?

I'll be perfectly honest with you and tell you that this is one of the biggest problems in understanding the Bible amongst the ordinary Christian and even for the first year seminary student.

Many of them look at the various laws in the Old Testament with a mixture of confusion and concern as to why God would try regulate things about fabrics and food. Why didn't Moses just deliver us the Sermon on the Mount or preach a message of tolerant relationships? All that stuff about priests inspecting skin conditions and what to do about a woman who punches her husband’s adversary in the groin sounds just way too weird for a lot of people.

One way to get around this conundrum is to divide the law up to three parts: civil, ceremonial, and moral; this has been the standard way to understand law and how it is relevant for the Christian life. The problem is that taxonomy is simply foreign to scripture where the law is regarded as an indissoluble unity. The proof of that is that there is moral law outside of the decalogue and one could argue that the Sabbath law is just as much ceremonial as it is moral!

You may have heard it said that the law is strange and weird but I say unto you that the Law had important functions in God's redemptive purposes and we could summarise them as follows

The Mosaic covenant and its regulation was intended to:

1. Be a temporary administration of God’s grace to govern Israel and intended to cocoon God’s promises around Israel until the promised messianic seed came (preserver);

2. Teach the Israelites about God’s holiness and the severity of sin (pedagogue);

3. Prolong their capacity to worship God in a pagan environment (purity);

4. Point to the coming of a messianic deliverer (prophecy); and

5. The law was preparatory for Israel’s role to extend salvation to the world (priestly).

The law is not just put there to regulate the hygiene and holy war of the Israelites, nor is the law intended just as a big stick to beat the snot out of you and remind you of what a miserable Wretch you are and who is so desperately in need of the grace of God. The law has a preservationist, pedagogical, doxological, prophetic and priestly role to project God’s saving purposes within Israel and to the world.

The law however is inadequate to save Israel or to save the world, it provides the scaffolding for a future project but does not, with a few minor exceptions, continue on into the future age permanently, or at least it does not function in the same way in the messianic age.

What about the role of the law in the Christian life?

And here we are caught between Jesus who “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matt 5.18) and Paul who said “We are no longer under the law but grace” (Rom 6.15).

The question of continuity and discontinuity between the mosaic covenant and legislation and the messianic era and the new covenant has been debated since the earliest months of the Jerusalem church and really came to a head with the admission of gentiles into the church and the question as to whether gentile Christ-believers should be regarded the same as proselytes to Judaism or whether faith and respecting Jewish scruples about impurity and idolatry is enough for them to be admitted.

That topic is a behemoth of a beast when it comes to how much law is there supposed to be in the Christian life and it depends on whether we're talking about Jewish Christians and gentile Christians and I'm not going to prosecute it here at any length.

What I believe are the main elements of Christian ethics are the following:

1. The teachings of Jesus;

2. The example of Jesus;

3. a life in the Spirit that yields the fruit of the Spirit;

4. The love command as the epitome and goal of the law; and

5. The law functions as a type of prophecy and wisdom for the churches.

The law is not the constitution for the church nor the primary basis for ethics, but it is not irrelevant for ethical decision making either.

So that is my summary of the role of the law in the biblical storyline and how the law fits into Christian life and ethics.

Two cool books I need to recommend to you both written by Australian authors are the following;

Brian Rosner on Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God

and

Benjamin B. Saunders on The Crisis of Civil Law: What the Bible Teaches About Law and What It Means Today.

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