What Is the Purpose of the Laws in the Old Testament?

In the last two posts we saw that the Old Testament writings remain authoritative as all scripture is God breathed and profitable for us (see 2 Tim. 3:16). We also briefly explored the covenants, or promises that God made to his people, and saw that God’s promise to Israel does not equate directly to the church. But how should we understand and apply the Old Testament laws?

In the next post, which will be the closing post on this matter, we will look at some specific ways that Christians can apply the Old Covenant laws to their own lives, and in some cases not apply those laws. But first we must understand what the purpose of all fo the laws that were given in the Old Testament are for.

John Calvin, in his book The Institutes of the Christian Religion, gives us a helpful starting point. He points out 3 purposes of the law.

The Law Reveals the Character of God

In the Bible God reveals to us that he is a holy God. This means that he is absolutely perfect, free from any wrongdoing or sin. He is in fact so holy that he cannot tolerate any violation of what is good and right and pure. This is called God’s holiness. The law of God serves to us that God is perfectly separate from sin and expects the people that created to be free from sin also.

The Law Keeps People from Doing What Is Wrong

God knows that we are sinners by nature and prone to doing what is wrong. Because of this he gave his people, the nation of Israel, a set and systems of laws to keep them from doing what is wrong. It was also to keep the people just as part of God’s holiness means that he cannot tolerate injustice of any kind.

The Law Reveals What is Most Pleasing to God

This might be the most important point, at least to John Calvin, but can also be hard to understand. We will see that believers are not bound by the laws of the Old Testament in certain cases (we will define this more in the next post). But the law reveals the nature of God, what is good for His people, what is wrong for His people, and what is harmful. I imagine if you are reading this that you probably have some desire to live in a manner that is pleasing to God. The law can help us understand how to do that.

What is the result of all of this? Well Galatians 3:24 can be really helpful here. In this verse Paul explains to us that the Law was a tutor that leads us to Christ. Let me explain what he means by that.

First it means that the law reveals our sinfulness. All of the laws of the Old Testament exist to show us that we cannot keep all of those laws. We are prone to think far better of ourselves than we actually are. We justify our wrong actions by pretending we had good motives. We make excuses for our behavior. The law shows us that there is some thing wrong with our hearts and we need help.
Second the law shows us the nature of Jesus. Jesus was the only person who was ever able to keep the law perfectly. He did so because he is the eternal Son of God. He became part of his own creation to do what we could not…you guessed it…obey the law. He obeyed where we disobeyed. But then he died when we should have died. Then he lived, having been raised from the dead 3 days later, so that we might live.
Thirdly the law, and our inability to obey it perfectly, reminds us daily of our need for Jesus to save us from our sinful selves. We need Jesus everyday. We need his saving grace to forgive our sins. We need his sanctifying grace to help us become more and more obedient to him.

The law, when we see that we cannot obey the law, is a tutor that leads us to Jesus. when we trust in his righteousness, death, and resurrection as the basis for God’s forgiveness of our sins then we are taught to run to Jesus everyday.

The point of the law isn’t to force us into perfect obedience. The point of the law is to show us that we are by nature disobedient and thus draw us nearer and nearer to Jesus every day.

In our next and final post we will look at a few questions that will help us to understand what to do with the laws found in the Old Testament when we run into them.