Post by Murph on Mar 21, 2024 7:55:04 GMT -6
How to Read Biblical Law
The Law of God, also known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), is not always easy to understand. A proper approach to the Law would emphasize that we can learn from all the laws of the Old Testament, even if we no longer observe some of them because they have been fulfilled in Christ. Several principles are given to help us understand this biblical genre.
1. There are three significant divisions of the law.
The threefold division of the Law is commonly defined as the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law. The moral law is summarized by the Ten Commandments. They are absolute and universal statements that have no specific penalties attached to them and were written by the finger of God (Ex. 31:18). They are foundational for the rest of the laws in the Old Testament and are quoted by the Apostles as still binding on Christians today (Rom. 13:8–10; Eph. 6:1).
The ceremonial laws focus on the worship of Israel and the matter of being clean and unclean, because if someone is in a state of uncleanness, he or she is not able to worship at the tabernacle. They include the laws related to sacrifice (Lev. 1–7), to food (Lev. 11), and to various conditions that relate to being unclean (Lev. 12–15).
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