How to Preach the Laws?

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Introduction

Most pastors recognize the importance of preaching the Old Testament laws, but good sermons are not common because it is not easy to preach the laws well. In this paper, I will discuss how to preach law passages that are faithful to their historical context and relevant to today’s audience.

What are the laws?

When Jesus spoke to the law of Moses, he referred to the Torah, the Pentateuch (Luke 24:44), because he was referring to the three collections of writings that comprise the entire Hebrew Scripture. However, in this article, I use the term ‘laws’ to refer to the commands that Yahweh gave to the Israelites whom He redeemed out of Egypt. These laws are recorded in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.

Why do we need to preach the law?

Since God gave the laws to the Israelites 3400 years ago in Sinai, why do we need to preach the law to 21st-century Christians? First, preachers are called to preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), and the laws are part of it. Even though they were given to the Israelites over three thousand years ago, God intended the laws to have implications for all people throughout history, including Christians (2 Tim 3:16).

Second, to preach the laws is to obey Christ. In the great commission, Christ told the disciples to teach all He had commanded them (Matt 28:20). Douglas Stuart wrote, “everything that Christ taught, demonstrated, and reinforced elsewhere in Scripture, built upon the specifics of the Old Testament law.”[1] That is why Jesus said He came to fulfill, but not to abolish the laws. The Lord even commanded the disciples to teach the laws (Matt 5:18-20).[2] Christ clarified, explained, expanded, and fulfilled the laws. Paul called these the law of Christ and instructed Christians to obey them (Gal 6:2).[3] Therefore, preaching the laws is a direct obedience to the great commandment.

Third, the laws provide vivid imagery that helps Christians appreciate, comprehend, and obey God’s commands. Averbeck said it well, “From the Old Testament law comes a wealth of imagery that underscores the values that affirm the Christian’s relationship with God under the new covenant.”[4]

What are The Challenges of Preaching the Law?

Preaching the law is hard. It is not as simple as “God said this, therefore just do it.” Or “we are now in the new covenant, none of these applies to us.” Some preachers with a distorted view of the relationship of the law with the gospel would fall into two extremes: legalism and antinomianism. Legalism says do more to be saved. Antinomianism says it does not matter how you live if you believe in Jesus.[5] To preach the laws correctly, the preachers need to understand the laws in their original context and how they relate to the gospel.

How to Study the Laws in Their Original Context?

A study of the laws in their original context is important because it allows us to discover not only what the laws mean but also why they were established. We do not fully understand the laws until we discover God’s purpose behind them.

The laws genre is part of the laws’ original context. Averbeck wrote on the benefits of studying the laws genre, “genre analysis helps the student, teacher, or preacher understand and apply the law lawfully (see 1 Tim. 1:8), with due attention to its goodness (see Rom. 7:12, 14, 1 Tim. 1:8, etc.), its weakness (Rom. 8:3 and Heb. 7:18-19), and its ancient Near Eastern cultural and historical context.”[6]

Studying the laws genre also means we need to take God’s covenants with the Israelites into account because “the Bible itself does not conceive of a law code without a covenant at its base.”[7] All Mosaic laws are part of God’s covenants with Israel. Therefore, it is important to study how covenants work in the OT.

Averbeck offered a six steps guidelines for study a law in its original context: 1) Observe the context within the canon; 2) Note the style of the law; 3) Examine the grammar of the law; 4) Compare laws in the biblical text with one another; 5) Look for parallels with the ancient Near Eastern literature; 6) Seek to determine the meanings of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, and paragraphs.[8] The key to understanding the OT laws is to ask questions that help us discover the purpose of these laws.[9] Once we understand the purpose of the law, we can proceed to relate it to the gospel.

How do the Laws Relate to the Gospel?

Some preachers are satisfied to preach the laws without ever mentioning Christ. For some of these preachers, preaching God is equivalent to preaching Christ, because Christ is God. However, for other preachers, including myself, we are obligated to help the congregation connect the laws to Christ and connect the congregation to the laws.[10] Christians need help to understand how they can relate to the laws. I will briefly discuss a few methods for relating the laws to the gospel.

The Luther’s Method: The Law and The Gospel

Luther holds to the unity of the Old and New Testaments. His famous principle on Scripture interoperation is “Scriptura sui ipsius interpres, Scripture interprets itself.”[11] However, at the same time, he emphasized the differences between the Old Testament laws and the New Testament’s gospel. For Luther, the role of Old Testament laws is mainly negative. The role of the law is to make people aware of their inability to obey God’s laws perfectly to earn their salvation.[12] Once the preacher preached the law to convict sinners, he should then preach the gospel to offer them forgiveness. Luther’s method is essentially Paul’s method for preaching the law, as seen in Galatians 3 and Romans 3. Many Lutheran pastors today use Luther’s method to preach the laws.[13] However, his approach focused too much on the negative effects of the laws and neglected their positive effects.

Calvin’s Method: The Gospel in the Laws That Sanctify

Calvin emphasized the unity of the OT and NT more than Luther. Luther primarily focused on justification by faith, whereas Calvin had a broader scope. Calvin focused on the sovereignty and the glory of God.[14] He saw that both the law and the gospel are in the OT. He applied the reformation’s sola gratia and sola fide back to the OT.[15] He taught of the third use of the OT law, that is, for believers who have the indwelling spirit to obey so that they can confirm their life to the will of God.

Regarding ceremonial law, Calvin taught that the ceremonial laws point to Christ and His works on the cross. When Christ came in the NT, the ceremonial laws ceased, not in their effect, but in their form.[16] To Clavin, the grace of Christ’s redemption is present in the Old Testament long before he is born.[17]

The Redemption History Method

The redemption history method is the foundational method to preach Christ form the laws.[18] In this method, we help the congregation to see how the laws fit into God’s redemption plan, which progresses steadily and reaches its climax in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. For example, when preaching the tabernacle passages, we can help the congregation see that God was with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden. Later, God told the Israelites to build a tabernacle so that God could dwell among His people. But that tabernacle is a shadow, pointing to Jesus, who is God incarnate on this earth, to be in the presence of His people. A preacher who does not take the whole canon into account when preaching the OT law could make the laws literary relics in a ragbag instead of an important chapter in the great redemption story of one book revealed by God.[19]

The Analogy Method

The analogy method is to find similarities between God and Israel in the OT, and God and Christians in the NT, and apply the principles in the OT to the Christians. Therefore, it is a great way to preach the laws.[20] However, we need to be careful not to allegorize the text. For example, when preaching the ten commandments. The preacher can show the congregation that Yahweh redeemed the Israelites out of Egypt and then gave them the ten commandments, not to earn their redemption from slavery, but to live out a covenant life with Yahweh who redeemed them. Then, when the preacher applies the text, he could show that Christians are people whom God has redeemed. God gave us imperative commands in the NT, not so that Christians can earn their salvation, but to live out a covenanted life with God who redeemed them.

The Contrast Method

The reverse of analogy is contrast. We can preach OT law using contrast, that is, we preach the law by finding the difference between the OT and the NT. [21] For example, when preaching the fifth commandment, the sabbath. We can contrast God’s command to the Israelites to set aside a day, the seventh day, to rest and worship God, with the NT revelation that Christians are to set aside the first day of the week to worship God.

Christ is the Ideal Man Method

The law portrays an ideal ethical man. However, no person can fully keep the laws, except Jesus. We can preach that Jesus kept the law perfectly. He is the ideal man. In application, we can uplift the church that God imputes this perfection of Christ to the the saints (Rom 5:18).[22]

Conclusion

In this paper, I cover the meaning of the laws, why we need to preach the law, how to study the laws in their original context, and various methods for relating the laws to the gospel. Brothers, let’s preach the laws that are faithful to their original context and help the congregation connect with the gospel for the justification of the lost and sanctification of the church.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Averbeck, Richard E. “Law.” In Cracking Old Testament Codes: A Guide to Interpreting the Literary Genres of the Old Testament, edited by D. Brent Sandy and Ronald L. Giese. Broadman & Holman, 1995.

Botterweck, G. Johannes, Helmer Ringgren, Holger Gzella, and Mark E. Biddle. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 1974.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Logos Bible Software, 1997.

Dempster, Stephen G. Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible. Repr. New Studies in Biblical Theology 15. InterVarsity Press, 2006.

Gibson, Scott M., and Matthew D. Kim, eds. Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today. Baker Academic, 2018.

Greidanus, Sidney. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method. WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.

Greidanus, Sidney. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature. WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988.

Keller, Timothy. Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism. Penguin Books, 2016.

Stuart, Douglas K. “Preaching from the Law.” In Preaching the Old Testament, edited by Scott M. Gibson. Baker Books, 2006.

Tabb, Brian J., and Andrew M. King, eds. Five Views of Christ in the Old Testament: Genre, Authorial Intent, and the Nature of Scripture. With John Goldingay, Craig A. Crater, Tremper Longman III, Jason S. DeRouchie, and Havilah Dharamraj. Counterpoints: Bible and Theology. Zondervan Academic, 2022.

Wright, Christopher J. H. How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth: A Follow-up to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. Zondervan, 2016.

  1. Stuart, “Preaching from the Law,” 97. ↑
  2. Stuart, “Preaching from the Law,” 99. ↑
  3. One of the methods DeRouchie proposed to preach Christ from the laws is to preach the laws as law of love, which is essentially the same as Paul’s use of the laws of Christ. He called this “See and Celebrate Christ by Using the Old Testament to Instruct or Guide Others in the Law of Love. Tabb and King, Five Views of Christ in the Old Testament, 190. ↑
  4. Averbeck, “Law,” 136. ↑
  5. Sinclaire Ferguson wrote that legalism and antinomianism are symptoms of one root problem, that is, we do not trust God’s goodness for our happiness. The solution is to preach the Gospel. For fuller discussion, see Keller interaction with Ferguson in Keller, Preaching, 48–56. ↑
  6. Averbeck, “Law,” 114. ↑
  7. Botterweck et al., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 2:273. ↑
  8. Averbeck gave an example using these steps on Exodus 21:2-11. See Averbeck, “Law,” 130–31. ↑
  9. Wright listed 14 questions a preacher can ask on a law passage to find out why the law was given. Wright, How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth, 177. ↑
  10. Greidanus taught that the essence of Christocentric preaching lies not in the lines drawn from the OT to the NT, but the move from the fullness of NT revelation to the new understanding of the OT passage. See Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text, 118. ↑
  11. Luther, WA 7.97, as quoted by Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 114. ↑
  12. Luther had two uses of the law, 1) in its civil or punitive function, to warn, condemn, restrain evil, curb behavior, and provide a measure of justice, and 2) as a mirror of God’s perfection and a judgment of human weakness in need of God’s help. See Gibson and Kim, Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today, 120. ↑
  13. Paul Scott Wilson, a homiletic professor, is a prominent advocate. His method is called “Law-Gospel view” in the book edited by Gibson and Kim, Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today, 117–46. ↑
  14. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 127. ↑
  15. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 133. ↑
  16. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.16. ↑
  17. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 136. ↑
  18. This is one of Greidanus seven methods to preach Christ from the OT. All these methods can be used to preach Christ from the laws. A mentioned a few methods in this article. For a full discussion of these methods, see Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 234–77. ↑
  19. This illustration is from Dempster. He approached the grand story of the OT from the dual themes of dominion and dynasty. See Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, 15–43. ↑
  20. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 261–66. ↑
  21. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 273–74. ↑
  22. This is one of seven ways to preach Christ from Old Testament according to Jason DeRouchie. He called this “See and Celebrate Christ through the Ethical Ideals of Old Testament Law and Wisdom. Tabb and King, Five Views of Christ in the Old Testament, 190. ↑

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