Works Righteousness (4) No Plan B

God does not make mistakes. The Old Covenant was not his Plan A that failed, which had to be replaced by a Plan B, the gospel of Jesus. The Old Covenant was not a failure. It was perfect for the purposes for which it was given (like everything God does).

The Torah provided a system of justice to help the Israelites manage crime in their new land (it was so good that God expected the nations to copy it). It also gives instructions that would provide spiritual protection for the people, if they applied them (they often didn’t). The Torah provided instructions for Economic Life to enable people who were used to being slaves to work together freely on various economic and social activities. To the extent they were applied, they were effective.

The Torah was not given to make people righteous. It was not designed to help people please God by living righteously. God has already chosen them to be his people, regardless of their lack of righteousness.

God always had a Plan A for dealing effectively with sin and evil and making humans righteous in his sight (not because he wanted to puff us up, but because our sin gives the spiritual powers of evil authority to control us). He always intended to do this through Jesus and pouring out the Holy Spirit, but he had to get a lot of things in place before he could send Jesus safely, so it was not the first thing that he did.

Because he had an excellent plan to make people righteous through faith in Jesus, he did not try to do it through the Torah. He did not try to do this because it would be a waste of effort. This is why the Torah does not set out a complete description of his standard of personal righteousness. However, it did prophesy the righteousness that would come through what Jesus would do.

The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live (Deut 30:6).

The Torah is ideal for the purposes for which it was given. It was not a failure because it did not try to do things that it was never intended to do. This is why, when the Pharisees tried to make the law into a system of personal righteousness, they lost the plot and turned it into a heavy burden that was too hard for people to carry (Luke 11:46). This happened because they were looking for a standard of personal righteousness that is not there. They were trying to do something the law was not intended to achieve. God always intended to solve the sin problem through Jesus.