A-Level Resources                                                                          Back to Anthologies Contents Page

5. "Jesus & the Law"

 

God: a Guide for the Perplexed – Ward K (Oneworld, 2002)

‘Jesus and the Law', pages 78-80 © One World International Foundation

 

Key question: Is the Torah irrelevant, simply superseded by a universal human morality?

•  Christian Misunderstanding: sometimes they seem to think that Jesus taught that ‘the Law', was abolished, and they tend to quote the Sermon on the Mount (found in the gospel of Matt 5—7, and in a rather different version — where it takes place on a plain — in the gospel of Luke 6) to this effect.
•  Jesus' Teaching says, ‘You have heard it said', and continues, ‘But I say to you', which could sound like a contradiction of the Law.
•  Look at it more closely – Jesus was not contradicting the Law – He was comparing

•  literalistic traditional interpretations of the Law
•  with a much deeper interpretation, which talks about inner motives as well as outward observances.

•  Jesus says, ‘Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets… not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished' ( 5:17 ,18).
•  He does not say, ‘Do not worry what the law says, do what I say instead.'

 

Supportive Teaching:

•  Confirmations that Jesus was an observant Jew who taught that the Law should be obeyed, but in a deep and inward sense:
•  First, the apostle Peter, who surely knew very well what Jesus taught, always insisted on keeping the Law, and was shocked by a vision that he had on three occasions which seemed to imply that he should even speak to Gentiles.
•  Second, at a general meeting at Jerusalem , recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 15, there was a heated debate on whether new disciples should keep the Law. There would have been no debate if Jesus had already said they need not bother.
•  Outcome: a compromise— new converts did not have to be circumcised but they still had to eat kosher food.
•  NB. Giving up the Torah was a gradual and unexpected process, brought about largely by the fact that the new movement was rapidly becoming almost wholly Gentile.

 

Secondary Question: How is it that so many people think Jesus gave up the Law?

•  Possible Answer: anti-Jewish prejudice the claim that Jews are legalists, whereas Christians are concerned about the innermost motives of human action.
•  Christians can be very legalistic about the application of their own moral rules, and Jews can very readily read the Torah, & be concerned with inward motives as well as with outward acts.

The Truth & Outworking:

•  Jesus did care about the Torah, given by God through the prophet Moses.
•  He interpreted them in the light of the principle of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself', which derived from a view of God's love as universal and unlimited.
•  Jesus taught that anger, lust, infidelity, dishonesty, vindictiveness and hatred

•  are inner motives of the human heart which
•  are all completely opposed to the universal love of God for all creation
•  which is the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21—48.

•  To love God truly is

•  to admire and wish to be like God, and
•  that requires rooting our all those motives from the heart.

•  It requires that you should love your neighbour, not just as you love yourself, but as God loves you.

 

Gentile Application:

•  All this was meant as an interpretation of the Torah.
•  But it does seem that you could adopt these principles without keeping the precise rules of the Torah.
•  When the early Christian churches found that they were almost entirely Gentile, they were thus able to renounce the 613 rules of Torah — which were, after all, for Jews — while claiming to remain true to the ethical teachings of Jesus.
•  They did not think of themselves, however, as having a totally secular morality.
•  Rather, following the example of the Sermon on the Mount, they tried to give an inward and spiritual meaning to the revealed laws of God.