I have pointed out that YHVH withdrew Himself from His chosen ethnic group, the Jews, such that with the Assyrian and Babylonian Conquests, Israel’s infrastructure, its monarchy, along with its delegated rulers, priestly arrangement, temple and so on were lost. Although exiled Jews returned to their land decades later and the temple was eventually rebuilt, their full infrastructure was never fully reinstated. In due course their promised Messiah was revealed, but despite their advantages in being prepared for their Messiah, Jews rejected Jesus as a charlatan or impostor.
Speaking to Jews about the Law, Jesus declared, ‘Don’t consider that I come down to loosen or dissolve the law or the prophets, I am not coming to loosen or dissolve, but to fully complete. 18 Because I say to you, ‘So be it up until the heaven and land come alongside. No, not one iota or accent goes away from alongside the law up until all comes into being’, (Matthew 5 v 18, 19). Jesus confirmed what he meant by ‘law’ when he then went on to talk about judicial approval and the depth and scope of behaviours such as murder, adultery and taking oaths.
Yet in his letter to Christians in Rome, Paul says, ‘But now we are being rendered entirely idle away from the Law, dying and withering away within that holding us down, in order that we serve within new, fresh breath [pneuma] and absolutely not within obsolete writing’, (Romans 7 v 6). He says something similar in his second letter to the Corinthians. ‘Now if the ministry of death, having been engraved in letters on stones and which is rendered idle and inactive….’ (II Corinthians 3 v 7, 8a). Paul always urges Christians who have been persuaded of the Messiah to the point of obedience to live a godly life day-by-day. Yet nowhere does he say to Christians, ‘Therefore walk around within the sphere of the Law and keep its injunctions’. If learning about and trying to obey the injunctions of divine Law was the effective means to live a godly life, then surely this is exactly what the Apostle would have said – but he never does. Instead, he urges Christians to exercise enlightened self-control and walk around within the sphere of the Breath. So how do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory perspectives about the Law? Does every small detail remain, or is it fading away?
