Question: What do you mean by “Law”?

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5.17

The Law of Moses – and the Commandments, statutes, and rules of God’s Law – are to the rest of Scripture, and the redemptive plan of God, as the acorn is to the oak.

Everything that unfolds, unpacks, or comes to fulfillment in all the rest of Scripture is already present, albeit in “seed” form, in the Law of Moses. The content, themes, priorities, doctrines, and foci of the Law of Moses determine the shape of everything else in Scripture and the divine economy. It were as foolish to think we could get beautiful, majestic, sturdy oak trees without acorns as to think we could gain the full benefit and splendor of Scripture apart from the first five books of Moses and the Commandments and precepts of God’s Law.

Who would start reading a great novel by skipping the first chapter? Imagine trying to make sense out of, let’s say, Great Expectations, without reading chapter 1. By the time the full story unfolds and its surprise ending comes to light, you’d be left saying, “What? Well who’s this guy, anyway?”

One of the reasons the Constitution has become so “plasticized” in our day is that people tend to read it apart from the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution has its own preamble, but this serves merely to bridge from the Constitution to the Articles of Confederation. The preamble explains that the Constitution encodes an effort to make “a more perfect union” out of that which the Articles of Confederation brought into being.

But both these documents are grounded in the Declaration of Independence, which is rooted in ideas of justice, civility, authority, and rights as defined by “nature and nature’s God.” Cut the Constitution off from the Declaration of Independence, and you can make it say pretty much whatever you like. Keep the two tethered, as the Founders intended, and the Constitution means something altogether different from what progressive minds would like.

So it is with the Scriptures. Read the Scriptures apart from the Law and what you end up with is a dime-store oak tree, a plastic model crafted out of human thought and skill, lovely to look at perhaps, but without roots or life or power. But plant the acorn of the Law in the soil of faith and obedience, and the oak of redemption and the divine economy comes to full flower in all the counsel of God, as well as in the lives of those who dwell in it (Ps. 1).

Thus, in a certain sense, when we use the term, “the Law of God”, we mean all the counsel of God in Scripture, as defined according to the teaching of His Spirit, beginning in the Law of Moses.

T. M. Moore

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