God's Moral Law

In what has been an ongoing public dialogue with CGI's Vance Stinson about God's Law, I have written posts, and Mr. Stinson has delivered sermons to the Shreveport congregation of his church (and sometimes has posted commentary here). In his latest sermon, Natural Law, Mr. Stinson asserted that Natural Law is inferior to the Law revealed in the Ten Commandments. According to him, Natural Law has been polluted by the subjectivity injected by our personal feelings about things. Hence, although the majority of the Natural Law is a part of the human conscience, he believes that it is essential that it must be applied to our behavior with the more objective guidelines provided by the Ten Words/Commandments. If that sounds too complex and unnatural to you, you are not alone.

Obviously, Mr. Stinson believes that his conclusions are both logical and scriptural, but I believe they arise from a very imperfect understanding of the Law and an extremely illogical interpretation of scripture and human nature. Mr. Stinson seems not to understand that the Ten Commandments were the centerpiece of the Old Covenant between God and Israel - that they are the basis and serve as a summary of ALL of the hundreds of commandments in Torah. The first four are the basis for all of the instructions regarding ceremonial worship and sacrifices. The last six serve as the basis for all of the civil and moral commandments regarding the personal and collective behavior of the Israelites. From a more macro perspective, the Ten are an elaboration of the Two Greatest Commandments of Torah: the first four specifying how the Israelites were to love God with their whole hearts and souls, and the last six specifying how to love each other.

Simply put, Mr. Stinson appears not to understand that the Two Great Commandments are the basis for God's Law and represent the ultimate iteration of the moral standard which he intended for ALL of his people (Israelites and Gentiles). In other words, as Jesus and his apostles (John, James, Peter, and Paul) noted, that God's people would be careful not to do anything that hurts or harms another person - that LOVE is the behavior which God expects his people to exhibit! Hence, Torah was intended to specify what the Israelites could and couldn't do. This was necessary; because Jesus Christ had not yet fulfilled the Law, and they did not have access to the Holy Spirit to help them to fully understand love or help them to properly express it. Christians, however, do NOT need the elaboration or specificity intended for the Israelites! Indeed, their circumstances are fundamentally different from those of the Israelites, both physically and spiritually. In other words, the Christian sacrifice, ritual, and moral standard is vastly superior to that which God delivered to the Israelites, and it is available to everyone (Jew and Gentile) who believes in and accepts what Christ has done for them.

Mr. Stinson concluded his message by comparing the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus with the epistle of James. For him, this comparison demonstrated that the Ten are still in full force for Christians. He seems not to be able to comprehend that both the Ten and the other 603 commandments (according to Jewish tradition) are elaborations of the Two Greatest Commandments for a carnal people who were the physical descendants of Abraham. As James himself stated, all of the examples which Mr. Stinson cited from this epistle are reflections of the Royal Law: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (James 2:8). In other words, a person who obeys this commandment will NOT be favoring some folks over others, speaking evil against each other, defrauding those who work for them, etc. Hence, the fact that we would find parallels with commandments in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus is NOT surprising! Moreover, the examples which he cited in his sermon are all traceable to the Ten, and ultimately to the Two!

No, far from demonstrating what Mr. Stinson wants it to demonstrate, his sermon seeks to justify Christians keeping the Seventh-Day, Saturday, Sabbath of the Old Covenant. It also seeks to impose the other "moral" provisions of Torah on Christians. Why? To deride and condemn those who do not believe that Christians are expected to obey the provisions of God's Covenant with Israel. Unfortunately, Mr. Stinson is trying to impose an iteration of God's Law on Christians which Christ has made obsolete. Like so many Armstrong Church of God pastors, he seems unable to fully acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth instituted a NEW and BETTER Covenant than the one which God offered to those ancient people!