When one argues the continuing validity of the Old Testament law to Christians one is met by endlessly repeated quotations from the Bible, which because they are reproduced verbatim from holy writ are taken to conclude the discussion. The exhortations recorded at the beginning of chapter six are a case in point. Having brought out the relevant Bible passage, the no-law protagonist proceeds with serene confidence that he has destroyed his opponent utilising the truths of scripture. The misguided heretic slinks off to a deeper study of God's word, severely chastened by this encounter. A close study of Paul's epistle to the Galatians is recommended - it has surely not yet been considered! Or perhaps a re-reading of Paul's thoughts on the true purpose of the law in Romans chapter seven is called for.

In fact what these people are doing is simply parroting verses of scripture, with no apparent understanding of the words they are saying. They are doing no more than trotting out formula statements from the Bible as a substitute for reasoned analysis and coherent argumentation. It is always evident that proponents of these views are unable to put these ideas across in their own words. The passages they quote drift around in the realms of abstraction, unrelated to ordinary human concepts. In this chapter I propose to examine some of these oft-quoted statements which pass for arguments, and reveal the speciousness underlying their use in traditional Christian theology.

At the outset I make mention of an interesting quirk in commonly expressed attitudes to the Old Testament law. In arguments on this issue Christians are often quick to point out that the law is indeed a good and noble thing. This sentiment will vary depending on the passage of scripture quoted, or level of antagonism the argument has reached. I would have thought that is the law was ever "holy and good" it remains so! This however is not borne out in discussions with Christians who regard the law as done away with. I have at least one example in print of a Baptist minister who describes the law of God as "monstrous and grotesque"!! Brave words indeed. I am glad that I will never have to explain this language to God almighty when my sins are revealed.

CHRIST HAS FULFILLED THE LAW!

"Since he has fulfilled it, there is no longer any need for Christians to obey the law. Christ has done it for us, kept it in our stead, therefore there is nothing more that needs to be done."

In a preceding chapter I compared the Christian religion to a house built on Jewish foundations, and suggested that Christianity is no more viable, as a purely gentile affair divorced from its Old Testament origins than a house without walls. Let us take this analogy one step further. Beyond merely quoting this statement, one may ask, how exactly has the law been rendered null and void? If it is good that the entire structure of Christian truth has been completed by Christ, in what sense is something done away with? It is exactly the same as building a house, stepping outside, convincing others what a wonderful building it is, then promptly declaring that you have absolutely no intention of ever living inside it, come rain, hail or shine! Yet this is exactly what Christians are saying when they cite this passage. Precisely why is it good that Christ fulfilled the law? If it is something irrelevant, indeed harmful to the whole nature of Christian experience, what was so wonderful about Christ having fulfilled it? Why didn't he just ignore it?

What people really mean to say is that God's law is something incomprehensible to human beings, irrelevant to them, and inherently nonsensical. God has relieved us of this exercise in futility through the agency of Christ. Thanks be to God! End of argument?

YOU ARE PUTTING YOURSELF UNDER THE LAW!

"Trying to obey the commandments places one under the law. If we are under the law we cannot rely on the grace of God, who has given us salvation freely through the atoning death of Christ, not through our own works. To do so is like trying to bribe our way into the kingdom of heaven by reliance on good deeds."

This accusation is usually followed up with sentiment that we can never really keep the law in its entirety. To break one commandment is to break all of them. So we need not attempt to keep God's law at all. The problem with this argument is that it is just as applicable to any act of good a Christian might perform which is sanctioned in the Bible. It is never made clear why one is "under the law" by keeping the sabbath, but not when resisting the temptation to commit theft. The answer is that one is led by the spirit to not transgress the "moral" commandments. Really? Is this some kind of automatic process requiring no independent thought on the part of the individual? According to this argument, the moment we reflect on what is the right course of action to take according to divine law, we are placing ourselves "under the law" and cannot rely on Christ. Is it that the spirit reveals to us which laws of the Bible we should be trying to obey, and which not, as we go through life? How convenient for the moral relativist! This view places the spirit-filled life potentially in conflict with the revealed word of God as the Christian blithely dispenses with part of God's law declared by Jesus Christ to be everlasting. A contrary idea is expressed in the Bible itself when it states the "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." (2 Tim.3:16)

Suppose I tell a supporter of this argument that next Saturday I intend to keep the sabbath of the Old Testament. What will be his response? "You mustn't do that; you will be guilty of placing yourself under the law!" But wait. Precisely what is wrong with observing next Saturday's sabbath? What is the nature of my wrongful conduct in ordinary human language - in words that I can understand? It was a solemn religious duty in the Old Testament. In what way am I dishonouring God by keeping a day holy to him for 24 hours; a day of rest from the profane things of the world; a day of meditation on the things of God; a day of quiet Bible study. Precisely what harm am I doing to myself spiritually, or to God by observing the Sabbath? I must be doing some harm because I am guilty of a terrible act of ungodliness am I not! The antinomian has no answer to any of these questions. What he has is a tradition of generations of Bible misinterpretation for which apologists have (mainly since the Reformation) scoured the Bible retrospectively in a desperate bid for scriptural support. These beliefs generally go under a label such as "the historic truths of Christianity"; in other words, ideas which have historically come to be accepted by Christians, but which have no biblical foundation.

The classic example of this phenomenon appears in the frantic search for biblical validation of Sunday observance. The practice of Sunday worship, in contrast to true sabbath observance, began in the days when Christianity was strongly influenced by pagan ideas and has no scriptural basis whatsoever. Defenders of this doctrine have relied on the flimsiest biblical evidence to assert that Jesus Christ made some kind of sweeping change to the law of the sabbath at some unspecified time. Antinomians are vague about when the abolition of the Old Testament law actually occurred. Precisely when did it become heretical to live according to the Mosaic Law? The day of the crucifixion? The day of the resurrection? The day of Pentecost? Are these people seriously suggesting that it was good, indeed positively obligatory, that one should keep the law one day, and that the very next day this very same conduct became ungodly and un-Christian? Given the profound importance of this change theologically, one would think the time would have been indicated fairly exactly. Of course the Bible nowhere records that the Old Testament law was specifically done away with at any particular point in time, one of the most compelling reasons for disbelieving that such a thing ever occurred!

A popular version of the "under the law" argument is that people who obey the Old Testament law have rejected Christ's atoning death. These unfortunates are at the foot of the cross with the jeering mob, howling for the blood of the redeemer! Since Christ's followers, who were really at the foot of the cross, promptly scurried off to keep the sabbath day, do they also fit into this category? According to this idea the disciples themselves have a rather tenuous claim to salvation as a result of this act of "faithlessness"! If they later learnt the error of their ways concerning law observance, this is nowhere referred to, or even implied in any passage of scripture.

What Christians really mean when they talk about being "under the law" is: "We are under the law when it comes to expressing our faith in God through real actions which inconvenience us (because that is what God's law generally asks us to do, to his glory) but not in the more hazy realm of moral relativism where we are more at liberty to impose our own - and not God's idea - of right and wrong.

CHRIST IS THE END OF THE LAW!

"The law was our taskmaster, teaching us right from wrong, until Christ came. It has now fulfilled its task."

If it taught us right from wrong to begin with how is it that God's standards have changed? (If anything the moral precepts of the Old Testament seem to be in contemplation here.) The claim that the coming of Christ resulted in the abolition of the law reflects the human desire to be free of God's rulership. The law did not come to an end with Christ, only the accusation it has against us, because we do not measure up to its demands (Col.2:14). The simple fact is that man wants to be free to act as he pleases without being encumbered by a set of rules and regulations the sense and meaning of which he simply does not comprehend because of his sinful nature. Those who wish to believe that the law has come to an end through the misinterpretation of this passage and others like it, really just cannot bring themselves to actually believe those parts of the Old Testament which enshrine the law. To argue that Christ is the end of the law provides a convenient way of avoiding the demands of God's law in their day to day lives. Christ is the end of the law only in the same sense as Beethoven is the end of music; or Rembrandt is the end of art - only because they represent the last word in their particular field of achievement. This does not mean that there is no longer any art or music around. Likewise Christ is the end of the law - there is no greater expression of its meaning and purpose. In a way, Christians have indeed passed "beyond the law". We are now so far beyond the written code through our depth of spiritual understanding that we no longer need have regard for such laws as "thou shalt not kill". For the true servants of God, the real sense of this law is that we should not even hate our brother, as Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount. It has nothing whatsoever to do with dispensing with limits on our outward behaviour represented by such laws.

WE WALK IN THE SPIRIT, NOT THE LAW!

"Keeping the commandments of the Old Testament is a worldly matter which diverts our attention away from the essential spirituality of Christ's teachings."

The first Christians, who were all law keeping Jews, would be intrigued to hear that they were less spiritual than modern day Protestants! How, logically, does this thought negate the law? Why can't a person be spiritual and still observe the commandments? Failure to keep even the outward observances of the law is a deeply spiritual matter - it represents disobedience to God.

THE OLD COVENANT HAS PASSED AWAY

"The Old Covenant, with its laws and commandments, was for the Jews and has now been replaced by the New Covenant of Christ"

Based on Heb.8:13, the argument is that the Old Covenant has been abolished. When pressed on this point most professing Christians will say that the Old Covenant passed away at Calvary. However this is not what the Book of Hebrews says. Written some forty years after the crucifixion, it asserts that the Old Covenant is "about to pass away". The essential thought behind this passage is that the New Covenant is far superior because it deals with the eternal salvation of Christ's servants, as distinct from God's dealings with his chosen nation - Israel. In a sense the Old Covenant is always in the process of "passing away" for spirit-filled New Testament Christians. After all, eternal salvation was never actually promised under the Old Covenant, as it is under the New. This was a radical departure from the complacency and conceit of 1st century Pharisees who believed they had salvation as of right under the Old Covenant because they were Israelites. The New Covenant is a "better covenant", incomparably greater, but the Old Covenant relationship still continues to exist as long as God is dealing with his fleshly nation Israel. As such, it is still of profound importance to New Testament Christians, because how God has dealt with, and continues to deal with, his chosen nation tells how he will deal individual believers. This was the whole purpose for God choosing a nation in the first place, through whom to demonstrate his will. The story of Old Covenant Israel is like a Hollywood epic movie being acted out for our instruction (in 2 Tim.3:16, the 'scriptures' referred to are the Old Testament!). Bear in mind also that mention of the New Covenant appears firmly within the context of the Old Covenant (Jer.31:31). The New Covenant cannot possibly be the enemy of the Old in this sense. Lastly, the laws upon which this covenant (agreement) were based pre-dated Moses and have eternal validity.

What meaning then ought to be ascribed to these supposedly Bible-based arguments? Firstly, Christ fulfilled the law as mentioned in previous chapters by giving us the final and complete explanation of its real meaning. This was the basic thrust of the Sermon on the Mount. In this sense he was also the end of the law. The word "end" here has the connotation of "completion". In addition, by virtue of living a completely righteous life himself in accordance with this perfectly expressed understanding of the law, and by becoming a sacrifice on our behalf, he also put an end to the hold which the law had over us, enabling us to escape the penalty of transgression of the law had over us, enabling us to escape the penalty of transgression of the law which we are all guilty of.

In light of the above, it is evident that far from possessing a superior understanding of the scriptures, antinomian Christians are in fact seriously confused about this issue. They are confused because they cannot make up their minds about whether the law is indeed a good or evil thing. On the one hand a Christian law-keeper will be looked upon condescendingly as an innocent dupe doing something honourable, but entirely unnecessary to salvation. On the other hand he will be derided as a tool of Satan, perverting the word of God! These two opinions cannot stand side by side. On the basis of the various scriptures quoted on this matter, one will be characterised as either a harmless oddball or a dangerous heretic! These are mutually exclusive qualities. Recall Paul's admonition, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you". This is meant to signify the complete folly of Mosaic law observance, and yet these are the words of a man who himself observed the finer points of Jewish ritual (Acts 21:26)! There is obviously something more going on here than meets the eye.

They are confused because they cannot put into ordinary language the thoughts which lie behind the passages they are using to support their cases. Worst of all, they are fulfilling the accusation made against Paul that he was teaching "Why not do evil, that good may come" (Rom. 3:8), which he himself described as slanderous! What else can the above assertions amount to? Instead of criticising the biblical system of law, these people should think carefully about the words in Isa.5:20,24:

In the same vein is a passage from Ezek.22:26:

It should be understood that if proponents of the antinomian view of Christianity based on the writings of Paul is correct, it does not mean they have simply won the argument about a correct interpretation of Christian teaching. In fact, what it amounts to is proof that the Bible does indeed hopelessly contradict itself!

Let me quote from a work of Christian scholarship which attempts to place the law within the framework of traditional Christianity: