One of the
criticisms of the Book of James by Martin Luther was that it discounted the
role of faith. The problem with his
assessment is that what is left is law.
Yet in the second chapter, James says that the law cannot save. So, what was misunderstood by Luther is that
James is saying that faith has a resulting change in the person which is
evidenced by good deeds. If the deeds
are not present, the faith that led to change may not be there either. So James is not discounting the need for
faith or saying that faith does not save; but rather is saying “put up or shut
up” about your faith. So faith is
evidenced more by deeds than words.
The role of
the “law” in my life is probably not what it is for some. I know there are Ten Commandments separated
out, and lots of believers think of that only when thinking of the law. But James refers to the “whole law” when he
discusses keeping the law. If one is
broken out of the whole law, that person is guilty of all of them. There are a lot more laws than those found in
the Ten Commandments. So what is the
purpose or value of those? I believe
there is value for believers in those esoteric and forgotten laws. It’s not to save a person from separation
from their Creator, it’s to better understand Him and His character.
The major
bodies of law texts are found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. They are not the most riveting reading. Once past much of the drama of Exodus, it
becomes hard to get through the legal parts.
Part of the difficulty though is the difficulty in reconciling what is
being read with a modern paradigm. It
sounds so foreign that is hard to visualize or imagine what it would look like
today. Therefore it makes little sense
to modern readers. This is where a
technique I learned from my wife becomes helpful. She would constantly ask me, “What’s the
point?” That’s the key question when examining
a set of laws on a particular topic.
A lot of or
most of Leviticus, the point is consistently the holiness of God requiring a
subsequent holy behavior in His people.
Right down to what they wore and how they did their hair this concept
was consistently, “Be Holy as I am Holy.”
In Deuteronomy the layout and structure is that of a Hittite Legal
Contract or Covenant between a power and those under that power. It could be the king or a prince, or a chieftain
in power, but someone in power. Once
they conquered another people, this is the document the conquered ones were
forced into complying with. The nice
thing for the conquered people is they knew what to expect.
Those two
contexts make addressing their contents somewhat easier. There are other historical issues to be
addressed, like the setting of the writing and so on, but the essential over
all context is a lot of help in understanding the paradigm it come out of. The book of Exodus is not as easy. This one is sort of a precursor to the other
two, and provides some foundational sets of laws and lots of what is known as “sundry
laws” in most modern translations (that is what the heading reads anyway). The laws defy a particular categorical
definition. This makes the sets of legal
matter in Exodus a bit more difficult to understand in one sense.
The key to
any of these legal texts is the one consistent truth about them all. The Deliverer of Israel provided His people
with a glimpse of what was important to Him, and therefore of His
character. All of Scripture can be seen
this way, but especially the legal texts.
In no other place do we see the Master of the universe giving direction
so clearly and so distinctly. It is one
of the places I see a clearer glimpse of my Master. It is one thing to see Him and His character
in the poetic and prophetic texts of the Hebrew Scriptures, but those stem from
these. The legal texts give life and
depth to the rest. These lay a
foundation for the Christian Scriptures.
Well, this
is all well and good, but what would it look like. I’m out of time this morning, so I’ll need to
demonstrate it later. In the meantime, I
will be spending some time in those texts to refresh my memory (that’s right, I
haven’t been there is a while, I know).
Perhaps I will discover something new.
Fortunately I don’t need to pass the bar or find my “powdered wig” to
search through these laws.
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