Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
It Did Not Evolve
“Therefore, the law is indeed holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”
Paul, in Romans 7:12
“Everyone who commits sin also transgresses the law, for sin is lawlessness.”
John, in 1John 3:4
When did Paul write Romans 7:12? And when did John write 1John 3:4? Before the New Testament began, or after? Afterwards, of course. But notice that Paul did not say, “the law was holy”. Rather, he said, “The law is holy”. And if in the apostle Paul’s day, the law of Moses was holy, then the law of Moses is still holy, for nothing has happened that would change the status of the law from Paul’s day until now. The New Covenant that Jesus purchased with his blood is an eternal covenant; it has not been amended, and never will be.
The attitude of reverence for the law found in Paul and John is found throughout the NT. Jesus himself honored his Father by recognizing the holiness and the authority of the law that his Father gave Israel (Mt. 5:17–18): “Don’t think that I’ve come to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy but to fulfill. Truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or serif of the law shall by any means pass away until all things have come to pass.”
The single most important thing about the law of Moses that anyone can know is simply that it is God’s law. It was not the work of human geniuses, taking the best of heathen laws and compiling them into a single code book. When God finished giving Moses the law, He commanded him straitly, “Do not add one thing to this law, or leave one thing out!” There is not a single sentence in the law that God gave to Moses that is from the wisdom of man. The entire thing came by revelation from God. The importance of this truth cannot be overstated.
In our time, the world is committed to the gods of evolution. These demon spirits, gods of this world, have infected every aspect of public life in this culture. What gets most of the attention, of course, is the demon of geological evolution and anthropological evolution, but the worst of those evolutionary gods is the demon of theological evolution. That spirit influences ministers and believers of every ilk to think the faith of Christ is a stage of theological evolution that evolved from the Old Testament law into a much higher form, more sophisticated and, therefore, more worthy of mankind. The spirit of evolution would have you think that since the law is a now-defunct version of the faith, we cannot trust what it tells us about life, about ourselves, and about God. This demon of evolution would also have you believe that you have evolved into a higher form of life than Moses and David, who loved God and His law.
But what Moses and other men of God said about God was not an indication of how far they had evolved from being monkeys. Every word in the law that Moses wrote came by revelation from God, who does not evolve. Our Creator was perfect before He created the first thing; He was perfect in the beginning of Creation; He is perfect now; He will be perfect when heaven and earth pass away; and He will always be perfect. He will never improve, and the only way we will ever improve is if we come down from our high evolutionary horses and humble ourselves to be transformed by His power to be like Him; to think as He thinks, to speak as He speaks, to feel as He feels, and to do as He does! This is what Jesus did, and that is what made him sinless.
The spirit of theological evolution would have you think of the law of Moses as a relic of man’s insufficiently evolved past, as merely the product of ancient, unsophisticated minds. But Jesus didn’t feel that way. He said that if anyone did not believe Moses’ writings, he could not believe in him (Jn. 5:46–47). Paul didn’t feel that way, either. He said the law was “our schoolmaster, to lead us to Christ” (Gal. 3:24). And as shown above, John defined sin, in a present sense, as transgression of the law.
The reason those holy men didn’t feel the way the demon of theological evolution would have us to feel about the law is that God does not feel that way, and they knew God. When Paul said, “The law is indeed holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good,” he said that because that is what God thinks.
The law of Moses did not evolve from anything. It came directly from God, fully formed. The New Testament did not evolve from the law or Jewish traditions. Men’s vain ideas and doctrines evolve, but God’s truth is eternal; and if we know it, we know it only because it is revealed.
Next time, Part Two: Knowing God