Originally posted by Soyeong
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The law on leprosy cannot - it presupposes that the Israelites were encamped on the way to the Promised Land. Christians are not
The command to the expel the Canaanites cannot - there are no Canaanites in the Promised Land available for expulsion by Christians.
Christians do not all have a single earthly king, though some live under monarchies - so the law about the king’s duty to study the Law cannot be fulfilled.
The command to stone a disobedient and rebellious son cannot be fulfilled - there are often no stones available, nor any elders to bring the son to. And in most countries, such an action would be liable to prosecution as murder or child-abuse.
Burning the unchaste daughter of a priest requires one to have married priests - most Churches do not, and burning the daughter would be liable to prosecution as murder.
The prohibition on seething a kid in its other mother’s milk cannot be observed if there are no young goats available not to seethe.
The dietary laws cannot be observed if there are no rock-badgers, hares, pigs, and other named animals to eat or abstain from.
The law of Jubilee presupposes an agrarian economy - outside that setting, it cannot be observed.
There is a command to blow the ram’s horn - how can Christians obey that, if there are no rams available to supply the horns ?
Christians cannot obey the command to use the Urim and Thummim - they are not available for use.
There is no Ark of the Covenant to carry, and no Levites to carry it - so that can’t be done either.
And so it goes on. Jesus did not keep every single one of the 613 commands - He failed to stone anyone, despite several commandments that require that very action. A Law-keeping Jesus would have stoned the adultress - He did not. He mixed with Gentiles, Samaritans, a woman with an issue of blood, and other “unclean” people. He was executed by “hanging on a tree” - thereby, according to Deuteronomy 21, becoming “accursed”. The Ethiopian eunuch baptised by Philip in Acts 8 is shut out from God’s People by Deuteronomy 23. The Law-keeping Pharisees and scribes are the people of whom Jesus speaks with very great severity - the “unclean” people are spoken to with great mildness.
Therefore, Jesus broke the Law. Therefore, “fulfilling the Law” cannot mean carrying out every single one of the 613 commands. The Law is fulfilled by love of God and neighbour - Jesus says so, St Paul says so. But nowhere in the NT are all Christians required to observe all 613 commands in the Torah - how could they, when many of those commands were meaningless outside the OT ?
A number of God's laws came with conditions under which they should be followed, so for example there is nothing wrong with not keeping the Sabbath holy when it is not the 7th day for the same reason that there is nothing wrong with not keeping God's laws in regard to temple practice when there is no temple in which to practice them.
When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, the condition for their return to the land was to first return to obedience to God's Law, which required them to have access to a temple that they didn't have access to while they were in exile, so we should be faithful to obey as much as we can obey.
If we believe that God can be trusted to give laws for our own good in order to bless us, then we should have the attitude of looking for reasons for why we have the delight or getting to obey God's Law rather than the attitude of looking for every excuse under the sun to avoid following God's guidance. So there are both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for not obeying a particular law and there is a difference between someone who is not keeping the Sabbath holy because it is not the 7th day and someone is is not keeping the Sabbath holy because they are rebelling against what God has commanded.
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