A collection of laws from Leviticus, chapter 19 includes the following:
19:2 Be Holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.
19:3 You must observe my Sabbaths.
19:9-10 When you reap the harvest of you land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. . . . Leave them for the poor and the alien.
19:16 Do not spread slander.
19:19 Keep my decrees.
19:26 Do not eat any meat with blood still in it.
19:27 Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
19:28 Don’t put tattoo marks on your bodies.
19:32 Show respect for the elderly.
19:37 Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them.
So, how’re you doing on keeping this list along with the hundreds of other laws spread throughout the Bible? Most Christians will claim that if the Bible says it, they make their best attempt at following the law.
Except for those they don’t.
The question that we must answer to ourselves is why. How have we come to decide that some of the biblical laws are no longer applicable in our modern day and age? More importantly, how have we come to decide which ones to put aside? There are some who will read the bible within the framework of God’s holiness and His requirements being unchanging and therefore, His laws remain unchanging. This prism does not take into account that despite the unchanging nature of His holiness, God’s will for his people does.
Christians have developed a discernment rooted in Jesus and the New Testament and this way of discerning what applies to our lives and what is to be left to history. This stands us up to accusations of picking and choosing what applies and to some extent, this is true. In fact, the Church as a whole has historically taken this approach to the commandments of the Bible. Our goal then is to identify the patterns of discernment that lead us to the choices we make. Anyone want to start the conversation?
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 