Old Testament Morality – Too Harsh?

I argued in the last post that Old Testament morality, far from being capricious or out of character with the New Testament, in fact enshrines the same characteristics we see in the God who is love.

“That’s all very well,” it may be argued, “but the problem isn’t the laws themselves. The laws may be reasonable, but the punishment is disproportionate. This is the work of a pitiless God; it leaves no room for mercy. How could this unrelenting rule-maker be a loving father?”

A Merciless God?

The problem with this argument is that we know from many Old Testament examples that God did indeed show mercy to those who broke his laws. In every specific case, we find that when someone requested mercy from God, for themselves or another, that request was granted. Even men who have spit in the face of God may be forgiven – if they are willing to ask for that forgiveness.

It is true that the Mosaic law does not leave room for mercy, but that does not mean that God is pitiless, only that the Law is pitiless. That it its job; that is why it is the Law. But the Law is not the whole story. Long before Moses went up Mount Sinai, Abraham went up Mount Moriah. Long before the law, God made a covenant with Abraham, a covenant based not on rules but on a promise.

The Law and the Blood

You see, there is an entire side of Jewish religious practice we haven’t discussed: the practice of sacrifice. Running parallel with the sensible, reasonable set of laws was another system, a system that required the shedding of blood for the ritual removal of sin. The law did not include mercy, but the tabernacle contained a mercy seat on which blood was poured. (If the God of the Old Testament is merciless, it is worth asking why he went to the trouble of designing a mercy seat.)

Old Testament theology cannot be understood without grasping these two parallel lines: the law and the sacrifice. All through the Old Testament, we see the law as a voice of condemnation, ever unsatisfied. Side by side with it, we see the pageantry of sacrifice and forgiveness. The law declared the wrongdoing; the mercy seat made it right.

The Blood and the Cross

Why is this important? Because these two lines continue on into the New Testament. The law remains inflexible, unrelenting and pitiless. We may try to keep the rules, do the right things, but we have all already lost the battle. The law is our great enemy when it comes to righteousness. We cannot live up to it, not because it is flawed but because we are flawed, unjust and imperfect. The rules are not enough; there must be a mercy seat, and there must be a sacrifice to cover it.

This is the heart of the New Testament, the core of Christian belief. It begins with the Law, but it ends at the cross. Last week I mentioned hearing a Harvard professor speak of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son and heir on Mount Moriah. The professor pointed this out as the polar opposite of Christian morality, but he missed the point of the story. Abraham went up on a mountain to sacrifice his son for God’s sake and received him back again. Around 2000 years later, on another mountain, the final atoning sacrifice was made when God sacrificed his own son for our sake – and received him back again.

In short, then, the very unrelenting nature of the Law is not only consistent with New Testament theology, but critical to it. You can’t understand the mercy seat unless you first understand the law. And you can’t understand the cross unless you first understand the mercy seat. If we choose and stand and fall by the law, we will fall, and it will not have pity or mercy. That is why we stand and fall by the blood instead. Because in the blood, even when we fall, we rise again.

“end_of_the_world-2-(CC0)-John_Martin” by TC Cool is licensed under CC0 1.0