Law and Gospel

'The witness of the Law and the Prophets to the righteousness of God is not merely, as Christians have sometimes strangely supposed, a witness concerning a severe retributive justice; it is a witness concerning God's gracious saving power, as Psalm 143 demonstrates.'

As I read Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul by Richard B. Hays I am continually beaten over head with this one truth: I don't have a clue how to read and interpret the Old Testament. Up until recently I wasn't too concerned with this. The Old Testament is, well, old, and large chunks of it don't apply anymore. I don't have to have bulls and goats sacrificed on my behalf, nor am I forbidden from eating my favourite of the meats - pig meat.

And yet as obvious as this sounds, the Old Testament was the only Bible the apostle Paul and all of the other Jewish Christians of his time knew. They had "the Scriptures" (what we call "the Old Testament"), and that was it. The Law, the Prophets and the Writings were Paul's bread and butter. He didn't have the Book of Hebrews to chew on, nor could he open up his Bible and read Romans. I mean he wrote Romans! And what's more, he didn't even write it thinking he was writing Scripture. Paul wasn't looking to render the Scriptures as he knew them obsolete by writing a "New Testament". Paul was writing a letter to the church in Rome in effect saying "This is what the gospel of God as found in the Scriptures is about. This is its fulfilment." That is why he could say in Romans 3:21,

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it..."

This sounds rather paradoxical, but what Paul is saying is that the Scriptures are like a signpost. You don't arrive at the signpost and think "I'm here. I've arrived." The signpost and the destination are not one and the same. They are necessarily "apart". However, they are by no means unrelated, and yet as Hays rightly points out, we as Christians draw lines between the signpost (the Law and the Prophets) and the fulfilment/destination (the righteousness of God found in Christ) and force people to pick sides. In our caricature, the Law and the Prophets bear witness to a capricious God who is fond of punishing people who disobey Him, but the New Testament? Well, God had a change of heart, and lets just be thankful for that.

For Paul, such a reading and interpretation of the beloved Scriptures he grew up on would have deeply offended him. His gospel was not plucked out of thin air. It was founded on 2,000 years of salvation history. It reverberated with echoes of the Old Testament, from the story of Abraham, to the prophetic writings of Habbakuk to the lyrics of the Psalms. All of these witnessed to the righteousness of God, which has demonstrated itself in Christ and is credited to us through faith in Christ. This is why Hays can say that Paul's gospel "does not annihilate the Law but establishes it".

There is much more to be said on this, and much much more to be mulled over from Hays' excellent book. To close this particular musing out, here is the Psalm which Hays says is echoed in much of Romans 3:

¹Hear my prayer, O LORD;
give ear to my pleas for mercy!
In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
² Enter not into judgment with your servant,
for no one living is righteous before you.

³For the enemy has pursued my soul;
he has crushed my life to the ground;
he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.
⁴Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

⁵ I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all that you have done;
I ponder the work of your hands.
⁶ I stretch out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.
Selah

⁷ Answer me quickly, O LORD!
My spirit fails!
Hide not your face from me,
lest I be like those who go down to the pit.
⁸ Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

⁹ Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD!
I have fled to you for refuge!
¹⁰ Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God!
Let your good Spirit lead me
on level ground!

¹¹ For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life!
In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!
¹²And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies,
and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul,
for I am your servant.