The Commandments as Liturgy

In the Western churches, the use of the Torah (Law) is a popular tool for demonstrating why we are going to hell. It’s often presented as a way to show us that we all have broken one of the commands and are therefore guilty. In this presentation, God must punish us because we are sinners. He gives us the law to show us why we are the subjects of his wrath. As many atheists have concluded, the god being mentioned here must be an irrational or immoral one.  It would be like a father giving a list of rules to his kid and then telling him this is why I’m going to use the belt on you.

 

The apostle Paul said the law was a schoolmaster (Gal. 3:24). Torah, which we call the Law because of its absoluteness, literally means teaching. It was not a teaching to condemn us but rather to show us how we should live, specifically as a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. The apostle Paul also said that the Law was given because of transgressions, not thee transgression, not the original sin (Galatians 3:19). Up until that time there was no instruction for people to live holiness in the world. As he said, “death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command (Rom.5:14)”. Up until the time of Moses there was no instruction on how to make God present in the world, there was no Torah for any nation to live by.

 

Holiness is not morality. Holiness is about how God is present in this world. God gave the Law to start a royal priesthood in the world, those who would bear his presence. He did not give the Law as a moral sanction. Morality in one form or another has always been present in the world even before the Torah.  The Law was not about morality. It deals with morality only in the sense of how being immoral is a deprivation of holiness. In addition, according to the Law places can also be deprived of holiness and also bodily functions can deprive us of holiness.  The Law was never to meant to condemn but to guide and obviously if you follow the Law you will discover there is always a place where we come up short. This was the reason for the sacrificial system and the Day of Atonement in the Torah.

 

Those who use the Law as a means of condemnation often point to Christ as the only person who could fulfill it. He was the only obedient servant. In contrast, Jesus only fulfills the law because he is holiness. He is the presence of God on earth. He did not fulfill the Law because he followed a bunch of rules and he in no way saves us from a god that is angry because we broke the Law. He saves us because he fulfills what we lack in making the world holy.

 

The Laws given by God should not be used as a way to condemn us. They should be considered as liturgy, the work we do to bring God’s presence here, specifically the 10. The commandments are the way we can make him present in creation. Making God present in creation was the original vocation given to Adam when God commanded him to “till and keep” the Earth. Adam was called perfect and renew the world to make it ready for God, to make it a holy place. This is the purpose of the commandments. For instance, the second commandment is not about the prohibition of worshipping statues. There are no religions in the world that worship statues, they worship what they represent. The 2nd commandment was about us. We are the image to be worshiped. We are the image of God in his temple, and we worship God in how we treat each other. All the commandments in one way or another are about this. They are about making this world holy. They are about how we live liturgically in the world.