Do you spend much time in the Old Testament law books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy? They are the primary source of the early, foundational accounts of God’s law being revealed, interpreted, and applied. Moses making trips up Mount Sinai to commune with Yahweh, and eventually coming down with stone tablets, tend to get most of the attention. Indeed, from that moment forward we read detailed and complex examples of how the these Commandments were explained, translated, and implemented.

As a gift from Yahweh, the Commandments establish an order and priority to our relationship with the One True Living God (the first four Commandments) and our relationships with each other (Commandments six through ten). There are “do’s” and “don’ts” or “shall’s” and “shall not’s” depending on the translation. They provide the means for God’s people to understand how a life of faith and a relationship with God is sacred. They remind us that our generational and familial connections are to be honored, respected, and supported. They guide us into the world and warn us of the pitfalls of actions and attitudes that do harm or devalue the integrity and humanity of a person.

After these gifts were placed in human hands, we quickly infused them with heavy doses of self-righteousness application that projected judgement and consequence on to others. We flipped the focus from holding ourselves accountable for our own sin to using the Commandments as a weapon to judge or subdue another person without mercy. We took what God had given as a foundation of personal “holiness” and claimed it for personal “onliness”, meaning only my opinion or perspective matters, especially in matters of sin.

Current cultural dynamics, in both the church and in the world, suggest that these OT law books are the only source of understanding and applying what the ten Commandments, and many other added laws and prophecies, require by letter, while ignoring what they also mean in spirit. In Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Leviticus he projects, “The book of Leviticus is a kind of extended time-out for instruction, a detailed and meticulous preparation for living “holy” in a culture that doesn’t have the faintest idea what “holy” is.” What could be used as a tool for understanding becomes an armament for theological battle.

When the prophecy of a Messiah became a reality in Jesus Christ, he often found himself at the center of such battles. Yet it was in those moments that Christ exhibited both the most basic human emotions and his Divine wisdom. Jesus proclaimed that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. In doing so, Jesus never said the laws were not to be obeyed or abided. What Jesus did say was that they were not the first or most important commandments.

“When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’” Matthew 22:34-40 NRSV

The path to personal holiness does not begin with a sincere but flailing attempt to obey the ten Commandments. Personal holiness begins with a deep and abiding commitment to the First and Greatest Commandment…Love God, love neighbor. Serve God, serve neighbor, with all you’ve got. To obey the letter of the law, without first being fully attached to that on which it hangs, will be a life of personal onliness.

May we go forth not to live in onliness to the law, but by holiness of heart, soul, and mind that comes from and through love, the greatest gift of the First and Greatest Commandment.