No homos in my church (pt 4)

  The law sends us to the gospel that we may be justified; and the gospel sends us to the law again to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified....The law sends us to the gospel for our justification; the gospel sends us to the law to frame our way of life.
Samuel Boltin (1606 – 1654), The True Bounds of Christian Freedom

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(Please note:  For this discussion the words civil and ritual can be used interchangeably with the words judicial and ceremonial.)

Before I delve into this morass any further, there is a small issue that needs some clarifying: what do I mean by the word "Law."  I wish there was an easy way to explain it, one or two sentences that would summarize the issue, but this issue has deep roots back to the Reformers and early church fathers.  It is for this reason I rely on the work of Samuel Boltin, a 1600's era English clergyman and scholar.

If I could sum up Boltin's view in a few sentences, it would be this:  "The ceremonial laws have been fulfilled in Christ. The sacrifices no longer need to be made as Christ has offered himself on the cross in our place. The civil [judicial] laws of Israel [the laws that set the Israelites apart from their Pagan/Gentile neighbors] are not necessarily binding on people and nations today. But the moral law has not been done away with. It is still in force and binding on everyone whether a believer or unbeliever." (p. 6)  [Brackets mine]  But it is not quite that simple.

As Boltin point's out, ",,,for the purpose of answering the query, lest we should beat the air and spend ourselves to no purpose, it will be necessary to make two inquiries: (1) what is meant by the word 'law'? (2) in what sense is the word used in Scripture? When this has been done there will be a way opened for the clearing of the truth and for the answering of the queries."  These two "queries" are still being asked and answered in a very similar way.

There are several questions we can ask to help distinguish between the laws, such as, “Does this law symbolize the separation of Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament?” or “Does it point forward to Christ’s atonement on the Cross?” If so, then God reveals in the New Testament that it is not binding on us (Galatians 3:24–25, 4:9–11, Colossians 2:16–17).  However, if the law is moral in nature and is nowhere rescinded in Scripture, then to disobey it would be sin (1 John 3:4, Deuteronomy 4:2, Matthew 5:18–19).

In other words, Lisle is asking, is this a civil/judicial law? Or is it a moral law?

For our purposes, I want to focus on how Boltin defines "law."  Or more aptly how Boltin details the Bible's use of the word "law."

• It is sometimes taken for the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets 
• The term 'law' is sometimes used as meaning the whole Word of God, its promises and precepts
• 'Law' is sometimes taken for the five books of Moses
• 'Law' is used for the pedagogy of Moses
• Sometimes 'law' is used for the moral law alone, the Decalogue
• Sometimes 'law' refers to the ceremonial law, as in Luke 16.16.
• Sometimes 'law' refers to all the laws, moral, ceremonial, and judicial

Just as today, "the controversy lies in the last-mentioned, where the word 'law' signifies the moral, civil/judicial, and ritual/ceremonial law."

According to Boltin, the ritual/ceremonial law "was an ordinance containing precepts of worship for the Jews when they were in their infancy, and was intended to keep them under hope, to preserve them from will-worship, and to be a wall of separation between them and the Gentiles. This law, all agree, is abrogated both in truth and in fact."

As for the civil/judicial law, "it was an ordinance containing precepts concerning the government of the people in things civil, and it served three purposes: it gave the people a rule of common and public equity, it distinguished them from other peoples, and it gave them a type of the government of Christ. That part of the judicial law which was typical of Christ's government has ceased, but that part which is of common and general equity remains still in force. It is a common maxim: those judgments which are common and natural are moral and perpetual." [Notice in Boltin's view there is a bit of cross-over in regards to the separation of the Israelites.]

"And so we come to speak of the moral law which is scattered throughout the whole Bible, and summed up in the Decalogue. For substance, it contains such things as are good and holy, and agreeable to the will of God, being the image of the divine will, a beam of His holiness, the sum of which is love to God and love to man."

Boltin then continues on to talk of whether "believers [are] freed from obedience to the moral law, that is, from the moral law as a rule of obedience?"  Although it is important to keep in mind his discussion concerning the moral law, it is not imperative to our current concern of which laws are what.

What is important to note, Lev 20:13 is not a part of moral law.  As hard as modern day, anti-gay apologists try and force it into that pigeon hole, the passage deals with ritual uncleanness, to'-ebah (I will be expounding on this point in a later posting) and the separation of Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament.  A point made abundantly clear further along in chapter 20:22-26.

Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people. Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

This aside concerning "which laws are what" may seem trivial. But, for a preacher-man like Anderson (Westboro Baptist Church, Kevin Swanson, Gordon Klingenschmitt also come to mind) who feeds off instilling fear of God's wrath, it is a window into his vile hatred.  That he ignores this delineation explains his reliance on the OT; he can't condemn it, if Christ fulfilled it.