In the Christian circles I have lived in my whole life, despite trying to escape, I often hear people say things like: “The Old Testament Law was impossible, that’s why Jesus had to come.”  Which I find, not to be true at all.  The whole point of the Law is that you are going to fail, and there are remedies for that failure.   What, you can’t sacrifice a few turtle doves?  You can’t stop cooking goats in their mother’s milk?  You can’t stop touching dead bodies?  Well even if you do we’ll give you a few days of separation to cleanse yourself, and you are back in the fellowship.  Or some of the harder ones; You can’t stop having sex with your neighbor’s wife?  You can’t stop pretending your friends butt is a woman?  Well there is a solution for that too, you are executed.  Problem solved!  What, you can’t be executed?  I think all of these things are eminently doable.  Now granted, not in our insane time.  People might make fun of you.

Moses with the Tablets of the Law. Guido Reni. C. 17th . Oil on Canvas.

It seems to me that some of the confusion comes because we mix up what Jesus said with the Law.  Jesus raised the ante, he was changing the paradigm.  He pointed out that the Law didn’t fix anything ultimately.  Hebrews makes the same point over and over.  The sacrifices had to keep coming, because the sin kept coming.  But it wasn’t impossible, and it wasn’t pointless.  What’s impossible is pleasing a Holy God.  But The Old Testament is about grace, which is why he made it doable.  And to this day the people still trying to keep that Law, namely the old Jews, those who rejected their Messiah, along with some Christians who still do what Paul said and treasure the Old Testament, are blessed immensely for it.  They have monitary wealth, mental health, technological advancement, peace of mind, and on and on the tangible benefits go.  We Americans’ are even benefitting from the vestiges of the Old Testament, originally the foundation of our system, which still remain in our common law tradition.  There is also some confusion because of Paul and Romans, but I’m not getting into that.

The Law said murderers should be put to death.  Jesus said that anger in your heart was the same as murder.   And by implication that those people deserve death too.  The Law said if you stole your neighbor’s wife you should be put to death.  Jesus said that lust in your heart is the same as adultery.  And by implication. . .  The Law was doable, pleasing an Infinitely Holy Being, not doable.  The problem is that the Jews thought they were pleasing an Infinitely Holy Being by keeping the Law.  They were hoping to be rewarded, not just in eternity but on this earth.  They thought that their good behavior warranted them being liberated from Rome.  Jesus raised the bar, he wanted to save not just them but the whole world.  And he didn’t just want to save it from political oppression, but to reverse all sin, even sin in the heart.  And so he sent his Holy Spirit to guide us.  So now we have an even more impossible task, and supernatural ability to do it.

I think a lot of the hand wringing over the Old Testament is just a complex excuse for pretending that God doesn’t care about holiness.  We know we should stop staring at our neighbor’s wife, we could stop.  But it’s easier just to throw up our hands and say “God demands perfection, and I just can’t do that”.  It’s easier to pretend that there are two Gods the OT God and the NT God.

It also saves us from actually having to think through the Old Testament.  The provisions of the Law are complicated, because the evil we weave is complicated.  There is no end to the evil of the human heart.  I am reminded of how the Jews turned rules about charity into and excuse for not taking care of their elderly parents.  There are even comments in the Law about possible perversions.  Don’t loan someone something when you know you are going to get it back in a jubilee year.

And then the real difficulty with the Law for our time: it’s so judgey.  Oh God do we really have to punish people who break your rules?  What about all those warm fuzzy grace banners?  Can’t we all just have tolerance?  Wasn’t Jesus a hippie?  Why do you have to be such a downer man?  And that gets to the heart of the Old Testament Law.  It is the community admitting what sin is collectively.  When someone breaks the rules of God, we the ‘congregation’, the people of God, the Church, don’t sweep it under the rug, we deal with it.  And we should be better at dealing with it than the world, according to Paul.  They should marvel at how we deal with it.  Sin is still serious.  That’s why Jesus had to die, it’s that serious.  Ananias and Sapphira just lied about their offering and they were put to death, in the New Testament.  And you can’t even tell someone that leaving theier spouse is unchristian?  The Old and New Testament are one, they express the revelation of one god, The One True God.  The divide is between modern American Evangelical churches and that God.  There is no interetestamental chasm.  There is a huge chasm created by the sin in our hearts.  So knock it off.  Because you can.