No Standard
Many theologians and Bible teachers believe that the old covenant was a works-righteousness system in which people were expected to earn salvation by doing good works to please God. They contrast this with the new covenant based on salvation by faith alone.
Many problems with this understanding have been exposed during the last fifty years. However, the fundamental problem is that the entire concept of works-righteousness based on law does not make sense because the law does not provide a standard for personal righteousness.
God's standard for personal righteousness would include most of the following:
- love of God
- humility
- truthfulness
- loyalty
- honest
- kindness
- hard work
- perseverance
- patience
- self-control
- no pride
- no anger
- no fear
- gentleness
- no coveting
- sexual purity
- no stealing
- no murder
Most of these standards were not spelt out clearly until they were listed in the New Testament as the Fruit of the Spirit. Clearly, these virtues are God's standard for personal righteousness, but an equivalent table of virtues was not provided in the Old Testament.
It seems that God knew that his standard would be impossible for humans prior to the cross and fulness of the Holy Spirit, so he did not bother setting them out systematically until after the Spirit had been poured out. This confirms that God knew that personal righteousness was not a realistic expectation prior to the cross, so he did not bother specifying what it entailed.
Different Purpose
Most of the Torah has nothing to do with personal righteousness because it describes a communal program that teaches people how to live together in a tightly populated land with relative harmony. The law was given when the children of Israel were about to move into a new land. While they were slaves, their taskmasters had controlled every aspect of their lives. Once they were freed from slavery and planted a new land, they faced the challenge of living together without falling out with each other over trivial issues. God gave them the Torah to equip them for this challenge.
The Instructions for Economic Life cannot be fulfilled by an individual because they provided guidance for people to interact in various economic activities. They dealt with challenges that did not arise while they were slaves. These instructions are specifically inter-personal, so they did not provide a standard for personal righteousness.
The Laws for Society (judicial laws of Moses) are instructions to the entire nation about how to deal with crime, given that God had not instituted a parliament to make laws for this purpose. God gave the Israelites a system of law implemented by local judges to constrain crime in their new society, so it is only tangential to personal righteousness at best.
The tabernacle described in the later chapters of Exodus and the sacrifices described in the early chapters of Leviticus were given to deal with unrighteousness, not to define personal righteousness. God did not expect people living under the law to live righteous lives because they were incapable of doing it, so he provided them with sacrifices to absolve their inevitable failure.
The laws about sexual immorality and health in the middle part of Leviticus were to provide people with spiritual protection in a world where the spiritual powers of evil were rampant and not yet defeated by the cross. The best protection came from keeping separate from evil people who were carrying evil spirits. God is not obsessed with sexual purity. The emphasis on sexual immorality is in Leviticus because it is one of the key ways that evil spirits get transferred to another person.
The food laws, circumcision and sabbath were a key way for the Israelites to mark themselves as different from the world. They were external markers that had very little to do with personal righteousness.
Ten Commandments
Even the Ten Commandments were not really a standard for personal righteousness. They were more of a summary of Gods covenant with his chosen people. (The number of each commandment is in brackets)
The first two commandments are a call to love God and avoid other gods. This was a requirement for the chosen nation, but it is more an expression of allegiance to God and his nation than a criterion for personal righteousness, as it contains no merit (1,2).
Not taking God's name in vain was a way of honouring him, not a way of earning merit with him (3).
Keeping the sabbath was a way of expressing trust in God (that he will provide sufficient food that they didn't need to work seven days a week to survive). It was a marker that kept them separate from other nations to provide spiritual protection. Keeping the sabbath provided rest, but it did not provide merit with God, because he judges the heart, not external circumstances (4).
Honouring parents and avoiding adultery were instructions for strengthening families, which were at the heart of the Torah community. Economic prosperity required strong families. If families were strong, the rest of the community was strong. Respect for family was essential for the welfare of the nation going into the new land. Avoiding adultery and honouring parents would produce social and economic benefits for the entire society, so complying with them was normal, not a way to earn merit with God (5, 7).
The commandments against stealing, murder, and honesty with judges were commitments essential for the functioning of God's justice system as described in the Laws for Society. Everyone in the community would benefit if they were widely respected. Keeping these commands was not a sign of personal righteousness. A righteous person would not even need these commands (6,8,9).
Complying with the Ten Commandments was not a sign of personal righteousness. Avoiding stealing and murder is quite a low standard of morality. People who avoided these crimes could still be guilty of failing many of the standards in the list above, so they were not a good indicator of personal righteousness.
Coveting is an important criterion for personal righteousness, but it is only one among many others, so I don't think that it is included in the Ten Commandments as a requirement for personal righteousness.
I believe the commandment was included there to help families and communities to work together on joint economic activities without falling out with each other. Economic benefits flowed, and capital accumulation was facilitated when people stopped coveting the other people around them. If coveting took hold, people would begin disrupting the economic activities of others. The final commandment was important for the benefit of the community, so it was not a sign of personal righteousness (10).
Many of the blessings of the covenant came through living according to the instructions for economic life and family loyalty, but they were not a reward for righteousness, just a consequence of living in the way that God recommended for them. If God suggested living this way, we would expect that applying his wisdom to community life would bring benefits. Living by God's wisdom is sensible, so it is not an indication of personal righteousness.
The people of the covenant had to persist in their allegiance to God, or he would be squeezed out of their country, and the spiritual powers of evil would push in and bring curses. These curses were the consequence of the people's choices, not a sign of being outside the covenant. God's covenant stood firm, even when the spiritual powers of evil got on top and the Israelites were exiled to a foreign nation.
Personal righteousness was not necessary for remaining in the blessings of the covenant. Experiencing these blessings depends on allegiance to God and living according to his wisdom. Consequently, criteria for personal righteousness were not provided in the Torah. The Old Covenant was not a system of works righteousness.
No Plan B
God does not make mistakes. The Old Covenant was not his Plan A that failed, which had to be replaced by a Plan B, the gospel of Jesus. The Old Covenant was not a failure. It was perfect for the purposes for which it was given (like everything God does).
The Torah provided a system of justice to help the Israelites manage crime in their new land (it was so good that God expected the nations to copy it). It also gives instructions that would provide spiritual protection for the people, if they applied them (they often didn't). The Torah provided instructions for Economic Life to enable people who were used to being slaves to work together freely on various economic and social activities. To the extent they were applied, they were effective.
The Torah was not given to make people righteous. It was not designed to help people please God by living righteously. God has already chosen them to be his people, regardless of their lack of righteousness.
God always had a Plan A for dealing effectively with sin and evil and making humans righteous in his sight (not because he wanted to puff us up, but because our sin gives the spiritual powers of evil authority to control us). He always intended to do this through Jesus and pouring out the Holy Spirit, but he had to get a lot of things in place before he could send Jesus safely, so it was not the first thing that he did.
Because he had an excellent plan to make people righteous through faith in Jesus, he did not try to do it through the Torah. He did not try to do this because it would be a waste of effort. This is why the Torah does not set out a complete description of his standard of personal righteousness. However, it did prophesy the righteousness that would come through what Jesus would do.
The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live (Deut 30:6).The Torah is ideal for the purposes for which it was given. It was not a failure because it did not try to do things that it was never intended to do. This is why, when the Pharisees tried to make the law into a system of personal righteousness, they lost the plot and turned it into a heavy burden that was too hard for people to carry (Luke 11:46). This happened because they were looking for a standard of personal righteousness that is not there. They were trying to do something the law was not intended to achieve. God always intended to solve the sin problem through Jesus.
Faith and Law
The traditional Christian view of the old covenant is that it was a covenant of works in which God's people were expected to earn his favour by living righteous lives. The usual corollary is that everyone failed to comply with Gods' standard of righteousness, so Jesus had to come and die on their behalf to satisfy God's requirements. In this view, the Old Testament covenant of works-righteousness is contrasted with the New Testament good news of salvation by faith.
The problem with this view is that the Torah does not describe a covenant of works and it does not set out a standard of personal righteousness that people should strive to obey. The truth is that the old covenant was a covenant of grace and faith, just like the new covenant. God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them into the promised land by a massive act of grace. He did this before he had given the Torah and before they had done anything to earn his favour. Grace came first. Faith followed because they had to trust that God knew what he was doing when he led them out into the wilderness. Their obedience to God was their response to his grace and the outworking of their faith in him.
The fundamental point is that both the old and the new covenants were covenants of faith. Paul makes this point clearly in Romans 3:30. God shall declare righteous the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through the faith.
Both those who are circumcised under the law and those who are not circumcised are put right with God through faith. The people under the old covenant needed faith in God's grace, just like everyone else.
Paul amplifies this point in Roman 4. He explains that the covenant that God made with Abraham was a faith covenant, not a works covenant. Abraham received an amazing promise from God that all nations would be blessed through him. Paul is clear that Abraham did not receive this promise because he had done good works. On the contrary, he received the promise because he trusted God.
For if Abraham was declared righteous, by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness" (Rom 4:2-3).If Abraham had to be righteous to be blessed by God, he would have failed. He made mistakes throughout his life, even repeating the same one twice (pretending that Sarah was his sister). However, God is gracious and decided to call Abraham and bless him with amazing promises, despite his frequent failures, and Adam trusted God's promise to bless the nations through him.
The promise to Abraham was made 400 years before the law was given (Rom 4:13-15). This means that God introduces blessing through grace, faith and trust before he gave the law, so it would not make sense for him to go back to forcing people to earn their righteousness by good works when he gave the law.
Abraham lived before the law was given, but David lived under the law. He also received God's blessing through faith, not by good works.
David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered (Rom 4:6-7).David could not earn God's favour by living a righteous life under the law. He needed the forgiveness that comes through trust in God's promises.
Abraham and David were two of the biggest heroes of the Old Testament, yet they could not earn God's favour and blessings by their own personal righteousness. They both experienced the blessings of God, so clearly, they were not dependent on good works for his favour. They received the blessing of God through their trust in his gracious love. That confirms that the Old Covenant was not a covenant of works righteousness, but a covenant of grace. God did not expect the people living under that covenant to earn his favour and blessing by living a righteous life.
More at No Covenant of Works.
