Before Jesus Christ made atonement for our sins through His
death and resurrection, God’s children did not have
the inner reality of the Holy Spirit. Instead, they had the
external reality of the ceremonial law (i.e. the sacrificial
system and all the related ordinances) that was a foreshadow
of the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ
came to replace the external reality of the ceremonial law
with the internal reality of the Holy Spirit. Through the
power of the Holy Spirit Christians are able to keep the moral
law in a way that Israel was unable to under the primitive
structure of the ceremonial law. In a sense, the ceremonial
law was a form of “training wheels” that are no
longer necessary because of the inner guidance and enabling
of the Holy Spirit, also known as the “Spirit of Christ”
(Romans 8:9). “So let no
one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival
or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to
come, but the substance is of Christ.” (Colossians
2:16-17) The apostle Paul corrected the church of Galatia
when they started returning to the ceremonial law: “For
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails
anything, but faith working through love.” (Galatians
5:6)
In addition to the moral law and the ceremonial law, before
the time of Christ God gave the nation of Israel detailed
civil law for governing their everyday affairs. Certain commands
in the New Testament for Christians that don’t fall
under the category of the moral law could be considered the
Christian’s counterpart to the ceremonial law and civil
law of Israel. These commands include communion (Luke
22:19), the great commission (Matthew
28:19), church protocol, requirements to be a pastor,
and others. In certain instances the apostle Paul gave instruction
that he did not consider to be commands from God but rather
his own advice - howbeit, the advice of a very wise person.
(1 Corinthians 7:12, 7:25, 7:40)
1 Corinthians 7:25 is especially noteworthy; on a particular
matter he explained that the Lord had not given him a specific
command and then went on to say, "yet I give judgment
as one whom the Lord in His mercy has made trustworthy."
In other instances the apostle Paul considered his instructions
to be direct commands from God (1 Corinthians
7:10, 2 Thessalonians 3:6).
PETER’S STRUGGLE WITH THE PASSING OF THE CEREMONIAL
LAW:
There was a time when the apostle Peter, a Jew who grew up
under the ceremonial law, struggled with the passing of the
ceremonial law. Under the ceremonial law animals were classified
as “clean” and “unclean”. Only clean
animals could be eaten. At one point God gave Peter a vision
about eating unclean animals to help him see that he was no
longer under the ceremonial law. (Acts
10:9-16) At another time Peter succombed to the pressure
of a group who taught that Christians needed to follow the
ceremonial law. The apostle Paul arrived on the scene and
confronted Peter: “Now when Peter had come to Antioch,
I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed;
for before certain men came from James, he would eat with
the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated
himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision [those
who taught that Christians were required to be circumcised]...
But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the
truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, ‘If
you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as
the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?'”
(Galatians 2:11-14)
Circumcision is a good example of the contrast between the
ceremonial law and the work of the Spirit in place of the
ceremonial law: “In Him you were also circumcised with
the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body
of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ...”
(Colossians 2:11) The apostle
Paul wrote to Gentiles, “Don't forget that you Gentiles
used to be outsiders by birth. You were called 'the uncircumcised
ones' by the Jews, who were proud of their circumcision, even
though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts.”
(Ephesians 2:11) The ceremonial
law only changed the exterior, but the Holy Spirit changes
our heart.
