I am traveling up river and ferociously placing paddle after paddle in the rough waters of a book that in Kindle form has 12,956 pages. It is a very large tome on the life and times of Paul the Apostle.  The current section is on the historical world of the Pharisees of the first century. I am struck at the similarities of these religious bastions of scripture and the current church.

Within the adherence and adoration of the Laws of Moses and all the accompanying interpretations was a deeply-seated hypocrisy.  They had, as a part of their study and training learned the well the art of straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

Each to reach the title of Pharisee had to learn how to defend almost any point of view.  And in doing so they had learned to be able to nullify by logic to nullify anything they professed to defend.  The intellectual prowess of Hillel the great Biblical Scholar and teacher was quite capable of slicing off any Mosaic regulation which had been found practically problematic or burdensome.  Pharisees and Sadducees alike had managed to set aside in their own favor.  They could construct rules by stretching a small particle of truth and proof texting to a point that Moses would have listened in mute astonishment.

As an example, there is an explicit mandate in the Law is the uncleanness of creeping things, yet the Talmud assures us that, “no one is appointed a member of the Sanhedrin who does not possess sufficient ingenuity to prove from the written Law that a creeping thing is ceremonially clean.” Dishonesty like this was at work even in the days when the Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. It seems to me that the great writer of so much of the New Testament would have struggled even to a point of frustration at a system at once so meaningless, so stringent, and so insincere? Could he fail to notice that they “hugely violated what they trivially obeyed?”

I too struggle at the rules and concepts of the Law in the church.  What is my responsibility to keep every little iota of every suggestion, mandate, commandment, precept, expectation, and even the phrase, “What would Jesus do?”  Did Jesus come to keep all these laws or is there something else?  It was against the temple to over throw the tables.  It was against the law to heal on the Sabbath.  How many times did Mary and Martha break the Sabbath rule by preparing and serving meals to the Disciples?  When Jesus touched a leper was He not made unclean?

Jesus was the Lamb of God; blameless, without spot or blemish.  What is the Law to the Christian?

Thanks be to God, “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life is set you free from the law of sin and death.”