HOW DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT APPLY TO THE LIFE OF A CHRIST FOLLOWER TODAY? - Part 1

I first this together several years ago, but wanted to share it again after a lot of you just finished reading Leviticus with me. It's fairly log, so I'll share in in several parts over the next few days.

      Like we find with so many areas of our lives as Christ followers, people often tend to drift to one of two extremes when answering this question. Although it is becoming less and less prevalent in our culture, there are those who would say that we must follow literally every part of the Old Testament Law. That, in turn would mean that we would stone adulterers and kill children who are disrespectful to their parents. Since most people aren’t willing to go that far, they often tend to gravitate to the other extreme and claim we can just ignore the Old Testament altogether. They usually justify that position by quoting Paul in Romans 6 where he writes that we are not under law but under grace. Unfortunately, that conclusion ignores the context of Paul’s letter as well as Jesus’ words that we’ve been looking at this morning. If Jesus didn’t abolish the Old Testament, we dare not do that. So what I want to do this morning is to see if we can’t develop some practical principles that will help us to find a middle ground that is consistent with the words of Jesus that we’ve focused on this morning. Before we get to the specifics, I want to take a moment to address the nature of the Old Testament Law. Many commentators have divided that law into three categories:

•         The moral law – this is the part of the law that deals with moral behavior and the penalties for violating those standards of conduct. This part of the law is summed up in the Ten Commandments and then further detailed in other related commandments. This part of the law applies to all men.

•         The civil law – this part of the law applied only to Israel and guided how they were to live as a people when they entered into the land that God was giving to them.

•         The ceremonial law – this is the part of the law that applied to Israel’s worship. It includes the sacrificial system.

 These distinctions can be somewhat helpful to us in determining how to apply the Old Testament to our lives as long as we recognize the limitations of this approach. Not all the law fits neatly into one of these three categories and there is often some overlap. But keeping this structure in mind will help us as we develop some practical principles.