The Law-giver and The Law-keeper: The Old Covenant

Chronologically, the next covenant we encounter is the Old Covenant (sometimes known as the Mosaic covenant). There are many components to this covenant, depending on what you want to include. However, the overarching principle seems to be tied to obedience. In Exodus 19:5-6, we read, “Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” However, we also read, “And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel – and God knew” (Ex. 2:24-25). The “Old Covenant” builds upon the promises given to Abraham. However, it also expands upon the rules needed to govern a nation.

Until this point, Israel has either lived under Egyptian rule or been more of a family structure (think Abraham or Jacob leading their family directly). God is delivering them out of the world’s system and establishing them as an independent nation. Can you imagine taking anywhere up to two million people who have never self-governed and turning them loose without established laws, business practices, or procedural guidance? We sometimes read the guidelines in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and especially Leviticus and feel bored. However, when you realize that God is doing the most loving thing possible by not only teaching his people how to be holy as he is holy but also helping them learn how to self-govern, your perspective may begin to shift.

The Old Covenant is the only conditional covenant of the six we are studying. In other words, God promised to bless the nation, protect the nation, guide the nation, deliver the land, etc., if they would obey. Yes, he gave them many rules to follow. However, most are incredibly practical (related to sanitation, for example) or as part of the priests’ jobs (so that they could teach the people). God wanted them to draw near to him, to know him more. However, due to sin, Israel (or anyone else, for that matter) cannot approach God on their own terms. The history of Israel is often a narrative of a people who failed to keep their end of the covenant. As a result, they were taken into captivity, they were almost constantly oppressed by their enemies, and they had problems retaining ownership of their land.

Today, most Christians believe that we are living under the New Covenant and that we are governed by grace, not merely the Law. However, I think it is important to understand that the Old Covenant wasn’t bad. Jesus actually said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them…For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:17-20). That last statement about exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees should have sent the crowd listening to Jesus into a panic. Those two sects prided themselves on their holiness. They made it their life mission to keep as much of the Law as possible, not to mention the traditions of the elders (about 600 oral laws established after the Babylonian captivity). However, they missed the point of the Law.

Yes, it was meant to govern the nation and pointed to God’s holiness. However, it was ultimately meant to remind the nation that they were insufficient on their own. They needed a Messiah. The sacrifices, feasts, and the mediation of the priesthood all pointed to the coming Savior. The religious leaders turned the Law into nothing more than a checklist instead of understanding the heart of God, who had called them to be different. Jesus arrived on planet earth to obey the will of the Father, which included perfectly keeping the Law (given by God). Now, certainly, Jesus was less interested in some of the six hundred or so oral laws that had been established by the elders of Israel. We could never hope to perfectly keep the Law (and certainly now with the right heart attitude). Yet we needed someone who could.

God is holy. Simply ignoring our sin (both the nature inherited from Adam and the acts of sin we commit on a daily basis) and letting us into heaven without us also being holy would be reducing the standard demanded by God’s character. The Law provided a temporary framework by which people could approach God without being struck dead, but it also provided a foreshadowing of the One who would eventually be able to fulfil the Law. Jesus was born of a virgin, thus without a sinful nature, and he never committed an act of sin. Not only that, but since he was constantly surrendered to the Father’s will, his heart was fully obedient. The author of Hebrews wrote, “’You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second” (Heb. 10:8-9).

The Old Covenant was never about God simply wanting to kill a lot of “clean” animals or smell incense. Rather, it was meant to foreshadow the coming perfect Lamb who would take away the sin of the world. It was meant to temporarily cover the sins of the people and make them long for their promised Messiah. Sadly, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day took the Old Covenant and tried to keep those rules out of their own self-effort and as a way to display their self-righteousness. When Jesus instructed, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), it wasn’t because he expected us to be able to keep all of the Law. No, he came to fulfil the Law, and then he came to give us his righteousness. Paul put it this way, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

We’ll talk more about that process of imputed righteousness when we get to the New Covenant. However, for now, may we find joy in understanding that we were never meant to keep the Law as a prescriptive or performative set of rules out of our own sufficiency. That will simply lead to shame and frustration when we fail. Christ came to do what we could not. Certainly, there are still some parts of the Law that we will benefit from keeping or that are repeated for our intended obedience in the New Testament (i.e., idolatry is still wrong, covetousness is still not in line with God’s character, etc., even though we are now under grace). When we study the New Covenant, we understand it is a calling to greater holiness (motivated by love, not legality), not less.

Still, we are not meant to bear the burden of trying hard to keep those rules in our own effort. The Messiah has come, and his supernatural life now resides in every believer. The perfect Law-giver and Law-keeper is waiting for us to admit that, on our own, we are insufficient. We need him to not only save us but to empower us. The grace that the Law could not provide is found full and free in Christ. Obedience is still expected, and holiness is still required to see God. Yet we are no longer responsible for producing those attributes. Obey him, surrender to him, believe that his ways are best and that he is sufficient to deal with any temptation or trial that comes our way. Rest – because he is our very righteousness – our faithful high-priest and intercessor.