Saturday, March 30, 2013

Law and Grace (17) Twisted Law

The Pharisees tried to use the laws is used as a method for achieving righteousness. This produced pride and hypocrisy, because the law was not given for that purpose. Their twisted use of the law produced a huge multiplication of rules that turned the law from a blessing to a burden.

The food instructions are an example (they are not expressed as laws). God gave the food instructions to the people to keep them healthy. He wanted them to know which foods are safe, and which are not. The Pharisees tried to make food and eating a standard for righteousness. To make this work, they created hundreds of detailed rules about eating, which placed an impossible burden on ordinary people.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean (Matt 23:25-26)
The Pharisees also focussed on the trivial. They were obsessed with food and the Sabbath, but they ignored God’s instructions for economic life, that would have really made a difference to the lives of the people.
They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them (Matt 23:4).
The Pharisees turned something that was a blessing into a burden, by turning the gift of the law into a standard for righteousness that God had not given. This shut people out of blessings that God had provided them.
And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them (Luke 11:46).
This hypocrisy really annoyed Jesus.

The corollary of the idea that the Old Covenant provide righteousness by obedience to the law is that the New Covenant provides salvation by faith, with no need for obedience. This cheap grace heresy has done considerable harm. Those who accept the gospel must declare that Jesus is Lord. Those who belong to him are required to submit to him and obey the leading of his Spirit.

1 comment:

Kublai7777 said...

The Pharisees tried to use the laws as a method for achieving righteousness.

There is evidence to suggest that many Jews believed they were already righteous by dint of their membership in the nation of Israel. This is based on Isaiah 60.21 which reads (YLT):

And thy people are all of them righteous, To the age they possess the earth, A branch of My planting, A work of My hands, to be beautified.

See also m. Sanhedrin 10:1.

This is the reason why circumcision, membership in the nation of Israel, that is, a Jew was such a prominent issue as to whether or not Gentile believers should be recognised as members of the people of God.

The food instructions are an example (they are not expressed as laws). God gave the food instructions to the people to keep them healthy. He wanted them to know which foods are safe, and which are not. The Pharisees tried to make food and eating a standard for righteousness. To make this work, they created hundreds of detailed rules about eating, which placed an impossible burden on ordinary people.

Jewish Identity is why the dietary laws (kashrut) became such a focus. They were part of the triad of minimum identity markers that distinguished a Jew from everyone else: prohibition of idolatry, circumcision, and the dietary laws.

The fear of failing to fulfil their role as guardians of the Torah by being assimilated into the neighbouring cultures no doubt drove this thinking too.