How apply OT law today?
Question 10023
Anyone who reads through the Old Testament carefully will encounter laws that seem to belong to an entirely different world: regulations about food and clothing, skin diseases, what to do when a neighbour’s ox damages your field, when capital punishment is required, and how annual festivals are to be observed. The question of what any of this has to do with a Christian in the twenty-first century is entirely reasonable. The answer requires careful thought, but it is neither “nothing” nor “everything” — and getting it right opens up the Old Testament in a way that makes it genuinely useful rather than perpetually puzzling.
What the Law Was and Who It Was For
Before applying the law, it is necessary to understand what it actually was. The Mosaic law — the legal code given through Moses at Sinai — was given specifically to the nation of Israel as the terms of God’s covenant with them as a distinct people. Exodus 19:5-6 makes this plain: “if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples… you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The law was, in effect, the constitutional document of a theocratic nation-state, defining Israel’s life before God in every dimension — worship, civil governance, family, diet, agriculture, and economics.
That context matters enormously. The Mosaic law was not given as a universal moral code for all peoples in all ages. It was given to Israel, for Israel’s particular national and redemptive-historical situation, as the vehicle through which God would maintain a holy people from whom the Messiah would eventually come. Failing to grasp this leads either to the error of attempting to apply Mosaic civil legislation to modern nation-states, or to the opposite error of dismissing the entire Old Testament as irrelevant to Christian life. Both miss the point.
What Christ Has Done to the Law
Jesus does not leave the question open. In the Sermon on the Mount He declares: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17). The word translated “fulfil” is plēroō — to fill up, to bring to completion, to accomplish what something was pointing toward. Jesus is not saying the Mosaic law continues unchanged; He is saying He is what it was always pointing to.
The book of Hebrews unpacks this with particular clarity in relation to the ceremonial dimension of the law. The priesthood, the sacrifices, the tabernacle — these were “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Hebrews 10:1). Now that the substance has arrived in Christ, the shadow no longer functions as it once did. A Christian does not offer animal sacrifices because the sacrifice to which those rituals pointed has been made, once for all, by Jesus (Hebrews 10:10).
The same principle governs the food laws and the purity regulations that separated Israel from the surrounding nations. Paul states it explicitly in Colossians 2:16-17: “Let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” The ceremonial regulations were not arbitrary — they were purposeful, and their purpose has been fulfilled.
The Moral Law Continues
What does carry through from the Mosaic law into the New Covenant is the moral law — those commands that reflect God’s own unchanging character rather than Israel’s particular national situation. The Ten Commandments are the clearest example. Nine of the ten are explicitly restated and reinforced in the New Testament. The prohibitions on murder, adultery, theft, lying, and idolatry appear throughout Paul’s letters, the General Epistles, and the teaching of Jesus Himself. These are not temporary regulations for a particular people — they are expressions of what love for God and love for neighbour actually look like in practice.
Jesus summarises the whole moral law in exactly these terms: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). The moral content of the Old Testament remains binding not because believers are under the Mosaic law as a covenant system, but because the character of God has not changed.
The Civil Law as Applied Wisdom
The civil and judicial laws of Israel — those governing property disputes, crime and punishment, and social relationships — occupy a distinct category. They were the application of moral principles to Israel’s specific context as a nation under direct divine governance. The church is not a nation-state, and no modern government stands in a theocratic covenant relationship with God equivalent to ancient Israel’s. Attempting to transpose Mosaic civil legislation directly into contemporary legal systems misreads both the nature of the law and the nature of the church’s calling in the present age.
That said, the civil law is not without value. The moral principles underlying Old Testament jurisprudence — proportionate punishment, provision for the poor, protection of the vulnerable, restitution over mere retribution — are expressions of genuine wisdom about justice and social order. They can be studied and applied analogically: as illuminating examples of how moral norms work out in communal life, even when the specific Israelite regulations do not transfer directly.
A Practical Framework for Reading
When encountering any Old Testament law, a small cluster of questions proves genuinely helpful. Is this law restated or applied in the New Testament? If so, it carries direct authority for Christians. Does it reflect the moral character of God in a way that transcends Israel’s particular national situation? If so, it carries ongoing moral weight. Was it explicitly a type or shadow of something Christ has now fulfilled? Then it is to be honoured as pointing to Him, not reinstated in its Mosaic form. Was it specific civil legislation for Israel as a nation? Then it functions as wisdom illuminating moral principles rather than as law binding on the church or on contemporary governments.
So, Now What?
Reading Leviticus or Deuteronomy need not feel like an expedition into irrelevance. Every page of Old Testament law reveals something about the holiness of God, the seriousness of sin, the grace involved in God establishing any covenant with fallen human beings, and the long preparation He undertook to bring His Son into the world at exactly the right moment. Read the Old Testament law with Hebrews alongside it, because Hebrews more than any other New Testament book explains what happened to the Mosaic covenant when Jesus came. And read it asking not merely “does this apply?” but “what does this reveal about the God I worship?” — because that question always has a rewarding answer.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” Matthew 5:17
