Animal sacrifices. A special priesthood. Rules for clothes and hairstyles. According to the Bible, God appeared to Moses at Mount Sinai about 3,500 years ago to give Israel a Law with all of these rules. Why in the world does the Old Testament include such a Law? Was it really that important that the people of God follow a Law that told them what they could and could not eat? And how does all of this relate to Jesus? I’ve been studying this topic and I have found three clear purposes for the Old Testament Law. It turns out that it’s not what most people think. Let’s dig into the Bible together in search of the answer.
But before we can do that, we need to make certain we are using our terms in the same way. What precisely do we mean by the Old Testament Law? You see, even the Bible uses the term “law” to refer to different documents. For example, in John 10:34, Jesus says, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?”1 The passage Jesus quotes from is Psalm 82:6—a passage of poetry—and He calls it law. Similarly, in John 12:34 the crowds claim, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever.” Likely they are thinking of passages like Isaiah 9:7 which says of the Christ, “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.” Or maybe they had in mind Daniel 7:14. In our modern arrangement of the Scriptures, we classify both of these books as prophets, but there is a very real sense in which they could be classified as law. Any portion of God’s word—not just an express list of commandments—can contain laws and principles that man is expected to obey. However, for our purposes in this lesson, when we use the word law, we are limiting it to the covenant God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai (also known as Horeb).
And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.”
Deuteronomy 5:1–3
Even here we should note that this covenant was referred to by several different names. The book of Nehemiah describes a period of national and spiritual renewal in Israel. As part of that renewal, a scribe by the name of Ezra was told “to bring the book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel” (Nehemiah 8:1). The very next verse tells us that “Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly.” Now, either Ezra brought the wrong book (which seems rather unlikely), or “the Law” and “the Law of Moses” refer to the same document. A few verses down, we find the Jewish leaders reading and explaining the book Ezra brought, only here it is called “the Law of God” (Nehemiah 8:8). Clearly, “The Law,” “The Law of God,” and the “Law of Moses” are all different ways of referring to the same covenant. As a result of this reading, the audience resolved to amend their ways and follow God once more. So it is in Nehemiah 10:29 we find them entering “into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law given by Moses the servant of God.” Here is yet another title for the very same law code. Don’t allow these various designations to confuse you, and don’t allow another person to tell you they refer to different covenants. You now know from Nehemiah that they are all one and the same.
Still, our question remains: What was the purpose of the Old Testament Law, a.k.a. the Law of Moses, a.k.a. the Law of God? You might be tempted to think that the reason was sin. There is a sense in which you would be right. After all, when Paul asks the question, “Why the Law?” in Galatians 3:19, he gives this answer:
It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Galatians 3:19
Well, there you have it! The Law was added because of transgressions (or sin, see 1 John 3:4 KJV). But what exactly did the Law have to do with transgressions or sins? This one verse tells us that while the Law was given because of sin, it wasn’t intended to fix the problem of sin. Confused? Let me explain.
In Galatians 3, Paul is discussing the covenant God made with Abraham, a covenant which predated the Law of Moses by 430 years (see Galatians 3:17). The Law was “added” centuries after Moses and millennia after Adam and Eve. Why is that significant? Because sin entered through Adam (see Romans 5:12). If the purpose of the Law was to prevent or address sin, it came generations too late. What is more, if that was its purpose, it ended generations too early. See, this same verse (Galatians 3:19) also tells us the Law was for a “limited time only.”
It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.
That offspring, according to Galatians 3:16, was Jesus Christ. Therefore, at the coming of Christ, the Law’s effect was at an end. If the primary effect of the Law was to address and fix the sin problem, then the solution to sin ended nearly 2,000 years ago. Paul says in Romans 7:4 that Jewish Christians in the first century had “died to the law,” and again in 7:6 that they were “released from the law.” In Galatians 3:24–25, we find that “the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” [that is, the Law]. Similarly, the Hebrews writer refers to the Law as the “first covenant.”
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:13
No one today is living under the Law of Moses. But everyone today is still confronted with the problem of sin.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1 John 1:8
Sin has always been a problem for every person; but as we have seen, the Law of Moses was only given for a very specific period of time. What is more, this covenant wasn’t intended for all people, but was given to Israel alone. That’s why Paul says that to Israelites belong, “the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Romans 9:4). Simply because of its limited time and recipients, the Law’s purpose cannot have been to “fix” mankind’s sin problem. Indeed, Paul confirms this when he writes, “For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).
Well, if the purpose of the Law wasn’t to “fix” sin, what was its purpose? We can answer that question with one word: Christ. Now, at first blush, that might sound like a cop out. “Oh, you preachers! Always thinking Christ is the answer to every question!” Ok, I hear you, but let’s investigate the Scriptures a little further.
The fundamental purpose of the Old Testament law was to prepare the way for the Lord’s Messiah (or the Christ). Notice Romans 10:4 where Paul says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” “End” is from the Greek word telos which means, “the end to which all things relate, the aim, purpose” (Thayer). In other words, from the very beginning, the Old Testament Law was aimed at Christ. Christ was the Law’s goal. Even more informative is Galatians 3:23–26. “Now before faith came…” Pause with me here just a moment. In the original language, Paul includes the article. He literally says, “Before the coming of the faith” which would be the Christian religion. So, before the establishment of the Christian faith, Paul says, “we were held captive under the law.” Keep in mind that when he says we, it actually does not include you and me. It includes those who had been under the Law of Moses. He is contrasting two covenants—the one established through Moses (the Law) and the other through Jesus (the Faith).
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
Galatians 3:23–26
The word we want to focus on is guardian in verse 24 which is also rendered “tutor” or “schoolmaster” in various translations. The original word referred to a servant in well-to-do Greek households who had the responsibility for chaperoning the children to and from school and even after hours. Essentially, this guardian made sure the children were where they needed to be and doing what they needed to do. Paul said that’s what the Law did for Israel! It kept the Jewish nation “in line” so to speak, until Christ came. How did it do this? Several ways stand out.
One, it served to protect against sin. Earlier, we noted Galatians 3:19 where Paul says that the law was “added because of transgressions.” Obviously, the law could not prevent all sin, nor was it intended to do so. But it did reveal and define sin. There are some things that are almost intuitively wrong to us. For example, virtually everyone agrees that it’s wrong to torture children for fun. But some sins are much more insidious, and the law revealed those as being wrong. Paul explains in Romans 7:7 that “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” The wrong in coveting isn’t immediately apparent to us. If we were making a list of laws for society, we probably wouldn’t even think to include it. But how many crimes and how much harm is instigated by someone wanting what another person has? Thefts, murders, and adulteries all begin with the sin of coveting. Man wouldn’t think to include a prohibition against coveting in his laws, but God included it in the ten foundational laws He gave to Moses. There is no way of calculating how many other sins were prevented by explaining that yes, it is wrong to covet.
The Law also served to restrict sin by punishing it, and in some cases doing so severely. Under the Law, numerous sins were to be punished with death at the hands of the community. Often, after assigning the death penalty as punishment, God would add, “So you shall purge the evil from your midst” (Deuteronomy 13:5). Adherence to the law not only removed the most severe criminals from society, but it also gave a powerful warning to everyone else as to the consequences of sin. Indeed, even if such drastic measures as public execution weren’t included, the Law still connected sin with death. Sacrifices (requiring the death of an animal) were made daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly for the sins of the nation and every faithful Jew would have offered their own individual sacrifices for their sins. Sacrifice and death were inseparable from the idea of sin. As the Hebrews writer explains, “under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Thus, to the spiritually astute Israelite, the Law helped them realize how awful sin truly is. In this vein, Paul would write that the Law served “that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (Romans 7:13). Through the Law, there should be no doubt in regard to the horror of sin. The Law clearly illustrated that sin was connected to death and required sacrifice. Realizing what sin was, how strictly it would be punished, and how horrible it truly was served to limit the amount of sin. But it did not eliminate it.
Two, the Law preserved the Jewish nation. Many of the Law’s commands addressed obviously moral matters—idolatry, murder, adultery, and the like. But other commands addressed topics that were seemingly much more trivial in nature—the planting of crops, the production of garments, even the styling of hair. What grand purpose could commandments such as these possibly serve? A very important one! They served to maintain the distinctiveness of the Jewish nation. In Leviticus 20:25, God describes to Israel the importance of keeping His dietary laws regarding clean and unclean animals. These would seem to be some of those trivial commands. But in the very next verse, He says, “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). All of these seemingly insignificant laws served a very significant purpose: they identified the people as different and belonging to God.
What is more, this distinctiveness served a moral purpose. Old Testament Israel was surrounded by pagan nations, and if the Israelites adopted their cultural practices, well, it was only a very short step to adopting their moral practices. If Israel became morally indistinguishable from the Canaanites, they would be punished as the Canaanites.
Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.
Deuteronomy 11:16–17
What does this have to do with Christ? Everything! God had promised that the Messiah who would bless all the nations would come from the seed of Abraham (Genesis 22:18), of Isaac (Genesis 26:4), of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10), and of the line of David (2 Samuel 12:7). If Israel had failed to maintain its distinctiveness, if God had been compelled to justly destroy the nation as He did with Noah’s world, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canaanites, and other cultures, then the line to the Messiah would have been broken before He was ever born.
Three, the Law prophesied of the Christ. Jesus once said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). This would have included specific prophecies like Deuteronomy 18:15 where Moses said:
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.
We know from Peter’s sermon in Acts 3 (specifically verse 22 and 23), that this statement was fulfilled in Christ. But it is also the case that all of the Law of Moses with its restrictions, observances, priests, sacrifices, and even structures served to foreshadow Christ. In fact, Paul tells the Christians at Colossae:
Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These things are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
Colossians 2:16–17
Christ is the ultimate reality to which all of these symbols pointed. Christ is the fulfillment of the Passover sacrifice (1 Corinthians 5:7). He is greater than the priesthood of Aaron (Hebrews 7:26–29). His one-time sacrifice accomplished what the repeated sacrifices of the old Law couldn’t (Hebrews 10:11–14). The old Law revealed the need for all of these things (priests and sacrifices and the like), but it also revealed the need for something greater. That something greater was realized in the mission and gospel of Jesus Christ.
On the day of His resurrection, Jesus (incognito) spent some time with two disciples who were left despondent by His death and confused by reports of a missing body. What did Jesus do to console them? Well, before revealing Himself to them “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). They didn’t understand it initially, but with the benefit of hindsight and explanation it was plain to see how the Law was pointing to Jesus. Maybe you’ve marveled at the fact that 3,000 responded to Peter’s claim that “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). But remember, they had the Law and the prophets to prepare them for the Messiah and help them identify Him when He came. Even today, some of the most powerful evidence for Jesus’ identity is found in a careful study of the Law of Moses. We can believe that Jesus is the Christ in no small part because of what is found in the Old Testament Law.
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
So what was the purpose of the Old Testament Law? Not to remove sins, because no animal sacrifice could do that. But it did prepare the way for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ through whom the whole world could be saved. Have you availed yourself of that sacrifice?
- In this study, except where noted, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. ↩︎