All Scripture Christian Scripture
As the New Covenant people, all of Scripture is Christian Scripture. We don’t read the Old Testament and apply it as if it is our covenant law or as if the prophets are speaking directly for us. I shared this quote on Sunday, but it bears repeating,
“We access and apply Moses’ law only through Christ and in view of the Apostles’ teaching, which together ground and sustain the church.” - Jason Derouchie –
We can read Genesis 1 and see the Trinity on display because God in Christ has opened our eyes to His triune nature. Like Proverbs, we can read the books of wisdom and see that God’s wisdom is unmatched as revealed in Christ. We can read the Prophets and see they always pointed to Jesus. Even the Ten Commandments, though clear commandments to the nation of Israel, are only rightly applied to Christians when accessed through the lens of Jesus, the True Israel. But that demands we understand how Jesus and the Apostles dealt with the law. The balance of Jason Derouchie’s article I took from which I quoted does just that.
Below I am pasting Derouchie’s main positions (developed from Brian Rosner) and a summary of each point. But I would encourage you to go and read the whole thing on the 9 Marks website (Relating Moses’s Law to Christians).
1. Biblical Authors Repudiate the Mosaic Law-Covenant.
Christians repudiate the Mosaic law-covenant. As the author of Hebrews declared: “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete” (Heb. 8:13). “The law made nothing perfect” (7:19), but in Christ, we find a “better hope” (7:19), a “better covenant” (7:22; cf. 8:6), “better promises” (8:6), “better sacrifices” (9:23), “better possession” (10:34), a “better country” (11:16), a “better life” (11:35), and a “better word” (12:24).
2. Biblical Authors Replace Moses’s Law with the New Covenant Law of Christ.
Today, the guiding authority for Christians are Christ’s words brought through his apostles (i.e., the New Testament). Fulfilling Moses’s prediction of a prophetic covenant mediator, God declared of Jesus in Moses’s sight, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” (Matt. 17:5; cf. Deut. 18:15). Everyone who hears Christ’s words and acts on them is wise (Matt. 7:24–27), and the call to make disciples includes teaching others to obey Christ’s teaching (28:19–20). His instructions through his apostles now provide the essence for all Christian instruction (John 16:12–14; 17:8, 18, 20; 2 Thes. 2:15). The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), for the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). Christians are part of the new covenant, not the old, and so they are bound to Christ’s law, not Moses’s law.
3. Biblical Authors Reappropriate Moses’s Law through Christ.
While Moses’s law doesn’t legally bind Christians, it remains indirectly authoritative, profitable, and instructive for believers through Christ’s mediation (cf. Rom. 4:23; 13:9; 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:16–17). Because Jesus fulfills various laws in different ways, we must consider each law in view of Christ’s work. While the New Testament only addresses a small number of Old Testament laws, its examples guide our handling of other related commands or prohibitions and illuminate each law’s lasting significance.
“We access and apply Moses’ law only through Christ and in view of the Apostles’ teaching, which together ground and sustain the church.” - Jason Derouchie –
We can read Genesis 1 and see the Trinity on display because God in Christ has opened our eyes to His triune nature. Like Proverbs, we can read the books of wisdom and see that God’s wisdom is unmatched as revealed in Christ. We can read the Prophets and see they always pointed to Jesus. Even the Ten Commandments, though clear commandments to the nation of Israel, are only rightly applied to Christians when accessed through the lens of Jesus, the True Israel. But that demands we understand how Jesus and the Apostles dealt with the law. The balance of Jason Derouchie’s article I took from which I quoted does just that.
Below I am pasting Derouchie’s main positions (developed from Brian Rosner) and a summary of each point. But I would encourage you to go and read the whole thing on the 9 Marks website (Relating Moses’s Law to Christians).
1. Biblical Authors Repudiate the Mosaic Law-Covenant.
Christians repudiate the Mosaic law-covenant. As the author of Hebrews declared: “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete” (Heb. 8:13). “The law made nothing perfect” (7:19), but in Christ, we find a “better hope” (7:19), a “better covenant” (7:22; cf. 8:6), “better promises” (8:6), “better sacrifices” (9:23), “better possession” (10:34), a “better country” (11:16), a “better life” (11:35), and a “better word” (12:24).
2. Biblical Authors Replace Moses’s Law with the New Covenant Law of Christ.
Today, the guiding authority for Christians are Christ’s words brought through his apostles (i.e., the New Testament). Fulfilling Moses’s prediction of a prophetic covenant mediator, God declared of Jesus in Moses’s sight, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” (Matt. 17:5; cf. Deut. 18:15). Everyone who hears Christ’s words and acts on them is wise (Matt. 7:24–27), and the call to make disciples includes teaching others to obey Christ’s teaching (28:19–20). His instructions through his apostles now provide the essence for all Christian instruction (John 16:12–14; 17:8, 18, 20; 2 Thes. 2:15). The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), for the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). Christians are part of the new covenant, not the old, and so they are bound to Christ’s law, not Moses’s law.
3. Biblical Authors Reappropriate Moses’s Law through Christ.
While Moses’s law doesn’t legally bind Christians, it remains indirectly authoritative, profitable, and instructive for believers through Christ’s mediation (cf. Rom. 4:23; 13:9; 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:16–17). Because Jesus fulfills various laws in different ways, we must consider each law in view of Christ’s work. While the New Testament only addresses a small number of Old Testament laws, its examples guide our handling of other related commands or prohibitions and illuminate each law’s lasting significance.
- Maintains (no extension): When fulfilling Moses’s prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, coveting, and the like (e.g., Exod. 20:13–17), Christ maintains the law’s essence without any extension from the old to new covenants (Matt. 15:18; 19:17–21; cf. Rom. 13:9). Obeying such laws would have looked the same in both eras.
- Maintains (with extension): When fulfilling Moses’s charge not to muzzle an ox while it is threshing (Deut. 25:4), Christ’s work extends the principle’s application to include paying wages to ministers (1 Cor. 9:8–12; 1 Tim. 5:17–18; cf. Matt. 10:10). Such extensions often occur in laws where their instruction includes cultural details that are different from our own; in such instances, we heed Jesus’s words at the end of the parable of the good Samaritan and “do likewise” (Luke 10:37), though working out the principle in a new way.
- Transforms: When fulfilling laws like Yahweh’s charge to observe the Sabbath (e.g., Deut. 5:12–15) or Moses’s directions on capital punishment (e.g., Deut. 22:22), Christ transforms. On the one hand, he secures sustained rest for his followers and calls them to receive it (Matt. 11:28–12:8), and on the other hand, his work leads to applying the charge to “purge the evil from your midst” to excommunication within the church (1 Cor. 5:13).
- Annuls: When fulfilling Moses’s laws about unclean food (e.g., Lev. 20:25–26), Christ annuls them, declaring all foods clean (Mark 7:19; cf. Acts 10:14–15; Rom. 14:20). But though he rescinded the diet restrictions, we still benefit from the commands by considering what they tell us about God and how they magnify Jesus’s work.