Should We Obey Old Testament Law?
00:00:00.000 | Happy Friday, everyone. Today we have a question from Wilmie, a listener to the podcast, who writes,
00:00:05.680 | "Good afternoon, Pastor John. I'm from South Africa, and I would really like to know whether
00:00:10.560 | it is sinful for me to eat pork and bacon. This topic has actually brought my marriage a lot of
00:00:16.000 | heartache, as my husband is a firm believer of the laws of Moses. And although he doesn't keep them
00:00:21.040 | all, pork is a big no-no for him. What would you say to Wilmie, Pastor John?"
00:00:26.720 | There have always been groups of Christians who believe that in order to honor God's authority
00:00:35.200 | in the Old Testament, we must continue to obey the food laws and other ceremonial laws, lest
00:00:43.280 | we be found in disobedience. There's a good impulse in this and a profoundly bad impulse
00:00:55.040 | in this. The good impulse is the desire to obey God. Nothing wrong with that. That belongs to
00:01:02.480 | what it means to be a Christian. The bad impulse is the failure to obey Christ, who teaches us how
00:01:10.160 | to obey God in regard to the Old Testament. So the good impulse starts perhaps with the text like
00:01:17.040 | Matthew 5, 17 to 18. Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
00:01:25.120 | I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and
00:01:31.520 | earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."
00:01:39.360 | And the good impulse puts the emphasis on every dot, every iota of the law standing until the
00:01:47.200 | earth passes away. And the bad impulse neglects the words, "I have come to fulfill them," and the
00:01:58.400 | words, "until all is accomplished." In other words, the bad impulse fails to see in Jesus the kind of
00:02:08.640 | fulfillment and the kind of accomplishment of the law and the prophets that God always intended in
00:02:16.400 | the Old Testament as the consummation and the end of the ceremonial laws. So the effort to hold on
00:02:26.000 | to the prohibition of eating pork is, in effect, a refusal to submit to God's plan
00:02:34.880 | for the fulfillment of the law in Jesus. So let's be specific now. Take the laws about
00:02:42.880 | foods in the Old Testament, unclean foods, which include pork. Jesus said something very specific
00:02:52.000 | about this in Mark 7, 15 to 19. He said this, "There's nothing outside a person that by going
00:02:59.760 | into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. And when he
00:03:07.280 | had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.
00:03:11.600 | And he said to them, 'Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes
00:03:21.120 | into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach
00:03:30.400 | and is expelled?' Thus he declared all foods clean." Now there's the key text for our friend.
00:03:42.240 | In other words, the prohibition of certain foods as unclean was a temporary part of God's way
00:03:52.160 | of making Israel distant or distinct from the nations of the world. Now with the coming of
00:04:00.160 | Christ, dramatic changes take place in the way God governs his people, because we are no longer
00:04:08.000 | a political ethnic people like the Jews were, but a global people from every tribe and language and
00:04:13.920 | ethnicity and race. With that dramatic change, Christians are woven into every culture on the
00:04:24.320 | planet and face hundreds of ethical dilemmas about what aspects of those cultures to share—what to
00:04:32.960 | eat, what not to eat, when to eat, how to eat—but God never solves that problem of being distinct
00:04:41.440 | from the world, which we still should be, by preserving the Old Testament ceremonial laws
00:04:48.960 | of circumcision and food laws. You can read about it in 1 Corinthians 8, 1 Corinthians 10, how he
00:04:55.200 | went about wrestling with those issues, and that wasn't the way he did it, namely by sending
00:05:01.040 | everybody back to the laws of the Old Testament. So this is what the dispute behind the book of
00:05:09.520 | Galatians is all about. What's the place of circumcision? And days and months and years—Galatians
00:05:16.480 | 4.10. Now Paul's position in Galatians is that circumcision is of no effect. And then he says,
00:05:26.080 | chapter 5, verse 6, "In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for
00:05:32.240 | anything, in spite of the command in the Old Testament to be circumcised. It doesn't count
00:05:36.880 | for anything but only faith working through love." And he could have just as easily said,
00:05:43.600 | "Neither pork eating nor non-pork eating counts for anything but only faith working through love."
00:05:52.000 | So we're free to eat pork, but Galatians 5.2 makes it really stunningly clear what we are not
00:06:01.520 | free to do with pork. Here's what Galatians 5.2 says, "Look, I, Paul, say to you, if you accept
00:06:10.320 | circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you." Whoa! I thought you said it doesn't matter
00:06:19.040 | whether we have circumcision or not. You can have it or not have it. You said that in verse 6.
00:06:26.000 | What Paul means is, if you embrace circumcision or pork eating as a new law, a new necessity for
00:06:37.520 | justification, or in the case of the Galatians, even a new necessity for ongoing, real, mature,
00:06:44.320 | spiritual, genuine Christian maturity, you're cutting yourself off from Christ if you treat
00:06:51.920 | pork eating or circumcision that way, and that is serious. So the final answer is,
00:06:59.840 | if a person chooses not to eat pork for various nutritional reasons or preference, this is no
00:07:08.720 | big deal. You are free to eat or not to eat. But the moment that abstinence is invested with
00:07:18.720 | biblical authority as the path of obedience or maturity or salvation, a line is crossed
00:07:25.360 | that contradicts Christ and the gospel. And Paul says in Colossians 2.16,
00:07:34.480 | "Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink. These are but a shadow of the
00:07:40.400 | things to come. The substance belongs to Christ." When you have Christ as your treasure and you're
00:07:48.960 | all satisfying food, you are free to eat pork or not. Amen. Such a critical warning and a critical
00:07:58.080 | key for unlocking the meaning of our Bibles and seeing the magnificent glory of Jesus Christ.
00:08:03.440 | Thank you, Pastor John. For more details about this podcast, or to catch up on our old episodes
00:08:08.640 | and to subscribe to the audio feed so you can get the new episodes as we release them,
00:08:12.240 | and even to send us a question of your own, you can do all of that at our online home,
00:08:16.160 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. On Monday, we hear from a husband whose wife recently suffered a
00:08:24.640 | miscarriage, and this man is wondering if his struggle with lust, namely his addiction to
00:08:30.160 | pornography, has anything to do with the miscarriage as divine punishment on his sin.
00:08:35.040 | There are a lot of complicated questions to work through, and we will do that on Monday.
00:08:40.960 | I'm your host, Tony Rengie. We'll see you then.
00:08:43.360 | Amen.
00:08:44.000 | [END]
00:08:44.880 | Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn
00:08:45.840 | Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn
00:08:45.840 | Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn
00:08:47.840 | Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn
00:08:49.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]