How Do We Apply Old Testament Law Today?

Question 07042

To ask how we apply Old Testament law today is to ask one of the most practical questions a Bible reader faces, because so much of Scripture is law and yet we plainly do not keep all of it. The believer is not under the Old Testament law as a binding covenant, and yet that law remains the inspired word of God that still instructs, convicts, and points us to Jesus. Learning to apply it rightly means neither keeping it as a code nor ignoring it as irrelevant.

The key is to understand what the Old Testament law was, what God has done with it in Christ, and how it now speaks to the people of the New Covenant.

The Old Testament law was a covenant for Israel

The Old Testament law, given through Moses at Sinai, was the covenant constitution of Israel as a nation. It came as a single, indivisible package, governing worship, civil life, and national identity, complete with national blessings and curses. It was never given to the church, which has never been a Mosaic-covenant community, and this is why we cannot simply lift its commands across to ourselves as though nothing had changed. The Old Testament law belonged to one people in one era of God’s programme.

This is also why the familiar division of the law into moral, civil, and ceremonial parts, keeping the first and dropping the rest, does not match how Scripture treats it. The Old Testament law came as a whole and ended as a whole when Christ fulfilled it, a point developed in the question of whether Christians are under the Mosaic law.

Christ is the end of the law

The New Testament announces that the era of the Old Testament law as a binding covenant has ended for the believer. Paul says Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes, that the law was a guardian until Christ came, and that the first covenant is now obsolete. We do not apply the Old Testament law by placing ourselves back under a covenant that has reached its goal in Jesus.

What continues is not a leftover portion of the code but the moral character of God, which predates Sinai, which the law expressed for one nation, and which is now written on the believer’s heart by the Spirit. The purposes the law was given to serve are explored in the question of what the purposes of the Mosaic law were.

How the Old Testament law still applies

So how do we actually apply the Old Testament law today? We read it, in the first place, as revelation of God’s character. Every command shows us what God loves and hates, and reading it devotionally we keep meeting the holy God who gave it. Paul insists that whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so the law still teaches us even though it no longer binds us as covenant.

We read it, secondly, as a mirror that exposes sin and drives us to Jesus. The Old Testament law was never able to make anyone righteous, but it reveals our need and sends us to the Saviour who kept it perfectly. And we read it, thirdly, as shadow fulfilled in Christ, since its sacrifices, priesthood, and festivals were pictures pointing to Him. Reading the Old Testament law this way turns it from a puzzle into a treasury, related to the question of whether Christians should obey the Levitical law.

Not under law, yet not lawless

The believer freed from the Old Testament law is not left without a standard. The moral character of God now comes to us through Jesus, the apostolic teaching of the New Testament, and the indwelling Spirit, which the New Testament calls the law of Christ and the law of the Spirit of life, taken up in the question of the law of the Spirit. Nine of the Ten Commandments are reissued in that teaching, often with greater depth than Sinai required.

This guards us from two errors. We avoid the legalism that drags believers back under Sabbaths, food laws, and feast days that were always shadows, and we avoid the lawlessness that imagines freedom from the Old Testament law means freedom from God’s moral character. The Christian is not under the old code, but he is under the moral character of God, applied inwardly by the Spirit.

Finding the principle behind the command

One useful way to apply the Old Testament law is to look for the abiding principle that a particular command expressed in its own setting. When the law said not to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain, the principle was that the worker deserves a share of the fruit of his labour, and Paul actually applies that very verse to paying gospel workers. The specific regulation belonged to Israel, but the principle of God’s justice behind it still instructs us.

The same approach unlocks much of the Old Testament law. The command to build a parapet around a flat roof teaches care for a neighbour’s safety. The rules about honest weights teach integrity in business. We do not keep the letter of these as covenant obligations, but we honour the character of God they reveal, applying that character through the wisdom of the New Testament rather than through the old code.

Reading the Old Testament law through Christ

Above all we apply the Old Testament law by reading it through Jesus, in whom it finds its goal. The sacrifices point to His sacrifice, the priesthood to His priesthood, the festivals to the realities He brings. When we reach a ceremonial command, we do not perform it, but we ask how it pictures the work of Christ, and the law becomes a window onto the gospel.

This Christ-centred reading keeps us from two errors at once. It stops us treating the Old Testament law as a rulebook still binding our conscience, and it stops us discarding it as irrelevant lumber. Instead the whole law, read in the light of Jesus, becomes profitable for teaching, for reproof, and for training in righteousness, exactly as Paul said all Scripture is.

A worked example from the Old Testament law

It may help to work through an example. The Old Testament law commanded Israel to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so the poor could glean, as Ruth did in the field of Boaz. A Christian is not bound to farm in that particular way, yet the principle endures, that those with plenty should deliberately leave room for the needy to be provided for with dignity. We apply the command by carrying its principle into our own generosity.

The same method handles the harder texts. The civil penalties of the Old Testament law belonged to Israel as a theocratic nation and are not ours to impose, yet they reveal how seriously God regards particular sins, and that estimate of sin still instructs the conscience. We read the penalty not as a rule to enforce but as a window onto the holiness of the God who gave it.

Handled this way, even the strangest corners of the Old Testament law begin to yield treasure. The believer asks three questions of any command, what it shows about God, how it exposes the heart, and how it points to Jesus, and the law that once seemed a dead letter starts to preach the gospel. This is how the whole of the Old Testament law remains profitable without being binding.

Seen in this light, the believer need never feel torn between honouring the Old Testament law and enjoying his freedom from it. The two belong together once we understand the difference between covenant and Scripture. We are free from the Old Testament law as a covenant that has reached its goal in Jesus, and at the same time we treasure it as the inspired word that reveals our God, exposes our sin, and points us to our Saviour on every page.

This settled understanding also quietly answers the endless debates about which commands still count. Rather than sorting the Old Testament law into lists of binding and non-binding rules, the believer reads the whole of it as covenant fulfilled and Scripture retained, asking of every passage what it reveals of God and how it leads to Jesus. That single approach brings clarity where rule-sorting only breeds confusion.

So, now what?

Read the law, do not skip it. When you come to a command in the Old Testament law, ask what it reveals about God, how it exposes your heart, and how it is fulfilled in Jesus, and you will find the older Scriptures rich rather than redundant.

Rest in your freedom without abusing it. You are not bound by the Old Testament law, so you need not fear breaking its food laws or feast days, yet you belong to the holy God it reveals. Walk by the Spirit, and you will live out the righteousness the law always pointed toward.

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Romans 15:4