Was Obedience to the Jewish Law Sin?

After It Was Nailed To The Cross?

            There is no doubt that the Bible teaches that the Law of Moses was “nailed to the cross”. We see that clearly in Col.2:13-14.

Colossians 2:13-14 (NKJV)

13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive             together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,

14  having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And      He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

            I really don’t think it requires any discussion to say that Jesus’ death on the cross ushered in a new relationship for all men with God. The sacrifice of Jesus’ blood on the cross created a new dispensation and a new “contract” with God where all men are justified and saved exactly the same. There was no longer “Jew or Gentile” but all were made as one body when they became Christians. No man was required to keep the Law of Moses anymore and the saved were “Translated into the Kingdom of Christ”, the church.

Colossians 1:13 (KJV)

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:  

            So, with all that being said, how do you explain the following situation with Paul and the Apostles in Jerusalem? Here are instructions given to Paul by the Apostles in Jerusalem:

Acts 21:20-25 (NKJV)

20 And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord. And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many myriads of           Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law;

21 but they have been informed about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses,    saying that they ought not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.

22 What then? The assembly must certainly meet, for they will hear that you have come.

23 Therefore do what we tell you: We have four men who have taken a vow.

24 Take them and be purified with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads, and that all may         know that those things of which they were informed concerning you are nothing, but that you yourself also               walk orderly and keep the law.

25 But concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing,           except that they should keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and       from sexual immorality.”  

            In the beginning of the days when Christianity became the new contract / covenant with God, the Jews of all ages had lived their lives being obedient to the Law of Moses. This law was imbedded deep in their conscious. To disobey the law, to some, would be a strong violation of their sense of right and wrong. For the Jew, at this stage of the new covenant, it would be sinful for him to violate his conscious and disobey the law.

            I remember as a boy in Tennessee in the 1950’s no one would think of working in the garden or mowing the yard on Sunday.

            This was a view that was imbedded into most people’s conscious by the actions of other people around them. Even stores were closed on Sunday and certain items were not allowed to be sold and the state had enacted “Blue Laws” to regulate business done on Sunday. There are still many people who can’t bring themselves to mow their yard on Sunday even today.

            Now we know that to require people to obey the Law of Moses or the “Blue Laws” as a condition of salvation is not only incorrect, it is also sin. But that is not what the Apostles in Jerusalem were telling Paul to do. They understood that the Jews could not violate their consciousness and do something that they felt was wrong, and so they allowed them the freedom to practice the Law of Moses, even though it was no longer required for their salvation.

            This transition period for the Jews, allowing obedience to the law was temporary at best. There was a day coming in about 40 years when the Temple would be destroyed by the Romans and the Jewish Law would be shattered and destroyed.

            Is it wrong today to do something that violates your conscious? We all know the answer to that, don’t we? It is just as wrong for us to violate our conscious today as it was for the Jews in the days of the Apostle Paul. If we feel like something is wrong and we do it anyway, it becomes sin for us. It is a different story, however, for us to take a matter of our own opinion and bind it on others as a condition of their salvation. This is where the Jews went wrong in the first century. Many Jews wanted to bind the Law of Moses on Christians as a condition of their salvation. This rose to the level of sin and was never tolerated by the Apostle Paul.

            There are those people today who are converted and come into the church with things they have been taught all of their lives. They too, have need of a transition time to acclimate their

consciousnesses to the doctrines of their environment. For them to fear changing all the old beliefs they were taught can sometimes violate their conscious until they have time to grow to a point where they fully understand how they should handle it. During this time we need to be careful how we handle these new converts. We must not “send them to Hell” because of their misunderstanding of Bible doctrine. Now that does not mean that we tolerate them teaching error about things that violate Bible teaching that alters the Gospel and can cause men to lose their salvation. But everything that a new Christian can misunderstand is not a threat to other people’s salvation. So, like the Apostles in Jerusalem, we must learn tolerance for things that violate people’s conscious when their feelings are not a threat to other Christian’s souls.

Carl O. Cooper