In this audio only podcast episode, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss the Ten Commandments and their significance in the Christian faith. They explore the different versions and arrangements of the commandments, as well as the moral and ceremonial laws in the Old Testament. They also delve into the purpose and value of the commandments in our lives, both in terms of personal ethics and our relationship with God. Join them for an insightful and thought-provoking conversation about the timeless teachings of the Ten Commandments.
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Watch, Listen, & Read the Full Transcript
00:00:02:04 – 00:00:24:19
Clint Loveall
Again tonight. And as Michael and I, you know, talked going into this, we started having conversation a while ago. What are we going to do for Lent? And this idea of law and Ten Commandments came up. We thought if we if we go just right, we can maybe do an overview, two commandments a week, and then we run out of time.
00:00:24:19 – 00:00:46:01
Clint Loveall
So we’ll probably record our final session and we’ll just put that out for anybody that wants to listen to it. Because, I mean, we don’t plan on meeting Easter evening. And so what that that will kind of be our plan going forward. And you would think that the Ten Commandments are familiar enough that you could just jump in.
00:00:46:01 – 00:01:14:19
Clint Loveall
But as we talked about it, we really felt that’s a pretty significant need to do an introductory session. If you ask ten Commandments, you know, a lot of people would know them or most of them. In fact, one of the things we want you to do I’ll give you a few seconds here, and we didn’t get paper, so you’ll have to try and also be a little bit of a memory exercise.
00:01:14:24 – 00:01:38:33
Clint Loveall
I’d I’d like to ask you to think of the first 310 Commandments that come to mind. So just you don’t have to remember all of them. I’m sure some of you do, but just the first three that sort of come to mind off the top of your head, and then we will we will go from there. So the Ten Commandments are the best known laws of the Old Testament.
00:01:38:33 – 00:02:09:42
Clint Loveall
There are 613 laws considered laws in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, there are two places where we’re given what we call the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy five, though never in the text are they called the Ten Commandments. In Deuteronomy, they’re called the ten words or the the ten sayings, possibly. But Ten Commandments is a title label that we have given them.
00:02:09:46 – 00:02:34:14
Clint Loveall
And interestingly, in the Old Testament, they’re never they’re never really singled out as particularly important because if you think about that, I mean, on one hand, that’s surprising. On the other hand, all of those 613 laws are considered sacred and therein. So there’s not really the idea that these are serious laws and these are our laws were not as serious about.
00:02:34:19 – 00:03:06:52
Clint Loveall
They’re all serious. And so the Old Testament doesn’t do a lot with the Ten Commandments as the Ten Commandments. That is kind of that has been more of a Christian. I don’t call it an invention, but it’s been more of a Christian tradition to kind of keep them together and single them out and to give them voice as a separate unit of go Jewish people, the Jewish faith, they recognize the Ten Commandments or the ten words.
00:03:07:04 – 00:03:28:50
Clint Loveall
They’re just kind of done, but they probably don’t have posters of them at home and had to memorize them because they are they are much more incorporated into the bigger law than they are within Christianity. And there’s probably a reason for that. There will touch on in a little bit.
00:03:28:55 – 00:03:58:15
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So I’m going to I’ll let you jump into the next section, but just a quick comment to make here. Christians have an interesting I don’t want to spoil the thunder here for a couple of minutes, but Christians have an interesting position here with the Ten Commandments because think of those 613 laws they could cross the Old Testament, the ones that you’re not keeping today when you didn’t consider the type of fabric that you put on your body or the specific food that was in the soups.
00:03:58:15 – 00:04:22:41
Michael Gewecke
Right. These are things that that Christians have addressed over time. We have these commandments of the Old Testament. There’s a kind of a simplicity to the ten. Just numerically, that that’s a thing that we can grasp. It’s given to by Moses comes down the mountain and God gives these ten things that Christians, for lots of different reasons, have found this a compelling way to move forward.
00:04:22:42 – 00:04:42:24
Michael Gewecke
That said, you would think that that would make it easy to categorize. Even amongst these ten you’d say we we’ve singled out we got 613, but the 613 are messy. So we’re going to have the ten that are delivered by Moses. You would think that that would be easy to break down themselves, but there’s actually diversities there.
00:04:42:28 – 00:05:11:35
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And having said that, the Ten Commandments, one of the benefits of the ten Commandments is they’re probably the least culturally bound rules that we know. They’re sort of universal, right? When the Old Testament tells you if your ox breaks your neighbor’s fence, you kind of go, okay, But when it says don’t kill, you go, it’s so they’re less constrained to their time and place than are some of those Old Testament laws.
00:05:11:40 – 00:05:33:03
Clint Loveall
But having said that, does anybody is anybody aware their own use? There might be. Is anybody aware that there are more than one version of the Ten Commandments?
00:05:33:07 – 00:06:04:46
Clint Loveall
Anybody know there are three? Yeah. So this may be a little bit hard to see. There are essentially Ten Commandments in three different arrangements based on whether you’re Jewish, Catholic, slash Lutheran or Protestant. Some Lutheran, not all Lutheran. So in the Jewish version, they take what we think of as the the preface, I’m the Lord, your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt.
00:06:04:46 – 00:06:28:01
Clint Loveall
By the way, if you know a little bit about Judaism, the G slash D, there is a that is a nod of respect to the Jewish people who won’t write the word God. They think it’s disrespectful to write God’s name, but even God’s title God. It’s so again, when you see that, you know you’re dealing with a Jewish author.
00:06:28:01 – 00:06:55:50
Clint Loveall
So they I’m the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where we take that as a preface or an introduction to the Commandments. They treat that as the first commandment. And then they go, They skip. Or we would say they skip idols. And so they they kind of subsume the commandment. Number two, no idols.
00:06:55:55 – 00:07:37:25
Clint Loveall
They include that under as a subheading of you shall have no other gods before me. In the Catholic version, if you look down here at nine and ten, they separate the come the covered commandment into two commandments. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife Commandment nine, nor shall you cover your neighbors Good. And you’ll notice that they also follow the Jewish pattern of not having a specific commandment about idols, thinking that that also fits within the the other commandment.
00:07:37:30 – 00:08:03:04
Clint Loveall
You shall not have other gods before me, though they list it first. So they make a they make a spot for a 10th commandment that is a separate covered commandment. The one that you’re probably most familiar with, kind of standard Protestant version. We we put idols, graven images as its own commandment, and we leave covet together as one commandment.
00:08:03:09 – 00:08:31:21
Clint Loveall
What’s surprising, I think about that to people is the idea that this thing we think the Ten Commandments, we don’t even agree with all of Christians, let alone all of Old Testament people on the order. So it is less clear cut, it’s less exact maybe than we might think. I don’t think most people and this isn’t a this isn’t a criticism.
00:08:31:21 – 00:08:53:22
Clint Loveall
I just don’t think most people know this. I think if you ask people, you know, we had different commandments than the Jews and the Catholics. No, we don’t. Well, we we don’t. We just order them. I mean, we don’t actually have different commandments, but you wouldn’t know their numbers if you start reciting them together. You’re not going to you’re not going to match up.
00:08:53:36 – 00:09:02:21
Clint Loveall
And I think, you know, that’s that’s interesting. One one thing you may be helpful. Are you?
00:09:02:25 – 00:09:31:01
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So though we have different ordering here with some of the ways that these have been grouped, there’s largely scholarly discussion surrounding the two movements or what they’re called the two tables of the commandments. And I’m certain at some point you’ve heard this in the Sunday school class of some sort. You’ll notice that on the front end specifically, we have commands that relate directly to God.
00:09:31:06 – 00:09:58:03
Michael Gewecke
And then those commands shift into commandments that deal with neighbor. So you have vertical commands and you have horizontal commands. You don’t want to dive into that too deeply and make hard and fast distinctions so that these have ways of flowing into each other, but largely that the idea of one, the Lord, your God have no other gods, that you have no graven images, take the Lord’s name in vain.
00:09:58:08 – 00:10:22:50
Michael Gewecke
The Sabbath, the idea of keeping that day holy to God. And then you move into the relational commands, the ways that we treat one another, their responsibilities that we have to neighbor, that you move down deeper to the list. Now, as Christians were of course aware, when Jesus is asked to summarize the commands, you remember when he says, Lord, Lord, you gotta play heart, soul, mind, strength, love your neighbor as yourself.
00:10:22:55 – 00:10:42:32
Michael Gewecke
We might think of him as summarizing these commands specifically, but Jesus was speaking to an audience who would have been fluent in all 600 commands. So once again, I think there’s a bias, a boss coming to a command text like that, because we think of it in terms of the commands that we’ve grown up, what we’re most comfortable with.
00:10:42:32 – 00:11:00:18
Michael Gewecke
But when Jesus is talking about our ultimate responsibility to God, please, is all of the commandments, all of them sprinkled throughout the Old Testament as doing that. But we see the groupings themselves here in the Ten Commandments, the two books that we have here.
00:11:00:23 – 00:11:51:08
Clint Loveall
So in rough terms, the first four Commandments, three commandments, if you’re Catholic, have to do with with God, and then the rest have to do with people and community. And within that, there is a theory that an argument may be a case to be made that in that second table saw from it on the Protestant list here from five down, that the commandments are given sort of in order of their impact and danger to society, not that one thing is worse than the other necessarily, but that honor your father and mother, you know, degrades community very fast.
00:11:51:09 – 00:12:13:55
Clint Loveall
Murder has a drastic impact. So it it’s not to say that covet is if you’re going to break a commandment, make sure it’s covert because that one’s out the bottom. It’s just to say that there is a theory that they’re sort of organized by the the impact they have on other people and the detriment they they have on society.
00:12:13:55 – 00:12:52:21
Clint Loveall
That’s not a not everybody agrees with that, but it’s one of those things to sort of argue about. Now, to come back to this, when you thought of your three commandments, were they in the first table or the second table? How? Okay. How many first? How many second? Okay. When we think of the Ten Commandments, I think we often think of the second table, the Knock Commandments, more so than the, you know, the first ones.
00:12:52:26 – 00:13:12:43
Clint Loveall
Well, you shall not make an idol, but we tend to think of the Relationship Commandments. They’ve done some really interesting surveys. I, i these things always make me smile. They go out and they tell people, you know, ask people, do you think the Ten Commandments? Yes. I’d love to take my lunch. We should we should keep them. We should put them everywhere.
00:13:12:43 – 00:13:37:14
Clint Loveall
And then they say, okay, could you name them? And the person goes, yeah, recycle, you know, And then they just come up with crazy stuff. So we, we tend, we tend to remember the relational side of that first. But generally speaking, I think.
00:13:37:19 – 00:14:02:49
Michael Gewecke
Right. I think that we tend to think of the ways in which these instruct our moral behavior. And I think that this is actually an important turn in the conversation. I think the question that I would submit to you as we study the Ten Commandments together is what purpose do they serve in your life? What what value do they offer to your life as a person of faith?
00:14:02:51 – 00:14:21:23
Michael Gewecke
I think most of us would at least start off with They have something to say about what I do, or maybe more pressingly, what I don’t do right. I try not to comment. I try not to take light that that’s at all possible. I try not to. I don’t want to be a person who steals or gives false witness.
00:14:21:23 – 00:14:46:37
Michael Gewecke
This idea of guiding a basic morality and a personal ethic. And that is a very historically fair reading of the commandments. We’re going to talk about that tonight. But it’s a very limited understanding of the commandments. Historically, the church has seen these commandments as far more than just what we as Christians should or shouldn’t do. That’s a very individual understanding of them.
00:14:46:51 – 00:15:14:31
Michael Gewecke
And I think in many ways it detracts from their their deeper meaning. So part of the transition here tonight as we move into the commandments next week is going to be the try to answer the question, what should we expect from these commandments in our lives? Because if you only expect for this to be some kind of social guide thing that every person should do, morally, ethically, this is the definition of a personal ethic.
00:15:14:36 – 00:15:38:08
Michael Gewecke
Then you expect one thing from the commandments. If, on the other hand, you think that this has something to say about our Christian character or about a Christian relationship with God, then this might land differently in our lives. So that’s the question that I’d love for you to sort of keep in mind tonight is what what value or what purpose of the commandments should we expect to have in our lives?
00:15:38:13 – 00:15:46:09
Michael Gewecke
What should the how should these function? And I think that leads us to some of the ways that we’ve historically these comments have been read.
00:15:46:13 – 00:16:17:03
Clint Loveall
So just as way of background as we look at the Old Testament and we sort through those laws, the categories that we use, we essentially said we can identify three types of law. And the first is moral law laws that sort of reflect God’s character. They are directly spoken through the behavior of the people. Sometimes this might be called covenant law, but it has to do with our behavior.
00:16:17:07 – 00:16:55:19
Clint Loveall
And you could read those laws. So our sexual ethics laws about justice and fairness, faithfulness and the Ten Commandments are generally understood as the best summary we have of the moral law in. In other words, how are we expected to live? What is what is God’s expectation of us in terms of how we behave? And one of the reasons the Ten Commandments, I think, has survived so well and thrived over time is because it’s such a great summary of that.
00:16:55:24 – 00:17:31:41
Clint Loveall
Don’t kill, don’t do harm, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t break covenant faithfulness, don’t break vows. So generally speaking, if you talk to people are think about the king, commit people of faith and probably especially people outside the faith. They would identify moral law as one of the key ways we understand Old Testament law and maybe the way that we understand the Ten Commandments, though there are other you.
00:17:31:46 – 00:17:55:36
Michael Gewecke
So this is one of the uses of law that Protestants in particular are going to struggle with, and that theologically, we’ve addressed them in different ways. But when you read the Old Testament, there are extensive rules about the festival calendar, about different things that you can do in some seasons, things you can’t do in other seasons. There are, as I mentioned, previous dietary laws, things that you can eat and shouldn’t eat.
00:17:55:40 – 00:18:23:31
Michael Gewecke
If we had a soup, it would have been I think we had a soup with pork give tonight. There’d be no cause. Yes, we did good. So if you didn’t if you didn’t think a whiff about that, then you’re not concerned about the dietary laws. Right. But if you read the New Testament, remember the arguments that you have in the Book of Acts about Peter saying, I’ve never eaten and any of these animals that wasn’t on accident.
00:18:23:36 – 00:18:59:36
Michael Gewecke
Right. That’s because that was a carefully thought through life choice. It wasn’t because of some cool diet fad, it was because of a deep connection to the idea of ceremonial law, the idea that to be pure and holy people, one must not profane your body with eating these things which are regulated by the Old Testament scripture. So as as the Christian tradition developed, a lot of the ceremonial law was interpreted as being time bound, as being connected to God’s choosing of the Israelite people and tacked like in acts.
00:18:59:51 – 00:19:35:19
Michael Gewecke
Show us how the early church wrestled with those ceremonial laws. Paul writes letters to these churches in the New Testament saying, Some of you are circumcised and others are not. And I’m telling you, don’t don’t do that thing just so that you could be Christian. And that’s the early church engaging with the question of ceremonial law. What do we keep in terms of our lived ethic as people of the New Testament, seeking to also be people in continuity with the Old Testament about what things are time bound or what things are connected to the people of Israel?
00:19:35:24 – 00:20:03:52
Clint Loveall
And we have generally Christians have generally considered Protestants have almost exclusively considered that ceremonial laws are now obsolete for Christians as people of faith. Jesus, when we say Jesus has abolished the law, we don’t mean the moral law, we mean the ceremonial law. We don’t have to sacrifice on the temple. We don’t have to, you know, not eat pork or shellfish.
00:20:03:54 – 00:20:31:59
Clint Loveall
We we don’t have to do those things. But there are places that are gray. There’s some middle ground that is tough. Like, for instance, keep the Sabbath. There are as many Sabbath laws in the Old Testament as any other topic. A Christians have said no. If you need to pick up sticks on the Sabbath, you know, okay, that’s not a deal breaker.
00:20:32:04 – 00:20:58:52
Clint Loveall
We also moved the Sabbath, the Sunday, and said, well, we’re going to do it on Sunday. And yeah, we’ll kind of pay attention to it. But so you don’t have to keep the laws. But then there are places where Christians have said, you don’t have to keep ceremonial laws except on Sunday. Then you better keep them. Don’t pick up those sticks, don’t blow your yard, don’t make your house.
00:20:58:57 – 00:21:23:09
Clint Loveall
And so if you talk if you talk from a theological standpoint, is Sabbath a moral law or a ceremonial law? It might depend. It might depend who you’re talking to. Protestant Christians, Our branch of Christians have generally said, yeah, we’ve seen seemed like a good practice to set aside a day for worship or we’ve tried not to be legalistic about it.
00:21:23:09 – 00:21:51:49
Clint Loveall
Other traditions have have been more comfortable leaning into the idea that there are some hard, fast rules about ceremonial laws. Then we come to the third section, which we call or is called we don’t call it. It is called civil and civil laws are specifically this one gets a little tough. These are society laws, societal laws that pertain to Israel.
00:21:51:54 – 00:22:32:28
Clint Loveall
So these are the things Israel is expected to do in order to retain blessings and to stay faithful as a nation. So these are health codes, inheritance laws of idolatry, laws, punishments. Now, civil laws like ceremonial laws have generally by Protestants been considered obsolete. Our biggest statement of faith as Presbyterians is the Westminster confession. Westminster says that civil laws are not binding on Christians anymore.
00:22:32:33 – 00:23:24:45
Clint Loveall
Those Old Testament laws don’t apply to us any more. However. There are those who argue that the expectations of the nation of Israel have been transferred to other nations, either specifically as in our nation or generally as in all nations. And they would argue that civil laws are not a category of laws to themselves. What are a subset of moral laws so that they are binding on people and that they would argue that we should continue to practice them and how to bore you as theological words.
00:23:24:55 – 00:24:03:04
Clint Loveall
The label for this is beyond me. Beyond me takes the word God. If be and the word no, which is law and puts them together and beyond me is the idea of a Christian form of government which rules over society by the laws of the Old Testament, or at least by Christian laws. So if you know something of John Calvin trying to trance were Geneva and rule it as a Christian province that’s the enemy.
00:24:03:09 – 00:24:55:55
Clint Loveall
If you listen if you ever listen to a politician who says we ought to be running this whatever country they’re talking about, why the laws of God? That’s the enemy. Sometimes in our day and age that gets called Christian nationalism. But underneath that is an old idea called the Enemy in. And when we get to ten Commandment discussions, which I think it’s helpful to know this, when you run into a discussion and somebody is advocating that we need to stamp the Ten Commandments on courthouses and schools and and wherever else, they are generally arguing from the prospect div that there is a civil component to the law.
00:24:56:00 – 00:25:27:51
Clint Loveall
They may or may not be the animists, but they are arguing for the enemy, though they likely don’t know that. But the idea is that the commandments are not just good for believers, they are good and should be enforced upon society. Now, that’s not an idea that Christians have always advocated, but there have always been some Christians that have advocated it.
00:25:27:55 – 00:25:55:00
Clint Loveall
And so some of our conversations about the Ten Commandments when they happen outside of the church often involve some of those aspects. And it I think it’s helpful to understand where they’ve come from and how you get there. You are. If you are ever talking with someone who’s telling you we need to use the Ten Commandments in that way, you’re having you’re not having a conversation about probably moral law or ceremonial law.
00:25:55:04 – 00:26:11:35
Clint Loveall
You’re having a conversation about how should the civil application of the Ten Commandments be handled? And the IT. I find it helpful to know that because we’ve been there before, We’ve we’ve thought about that before. That’s not new.
00:26:11:40 – 00:26:33:23
Michael Gewecke
So in the moment, we’re going to transition here to how some of our reformed forbearers have had moved forward on that. I just want to make a really quick point to bolster what Clint saying. I think largely that conversation that he’s describing boils down to the question of identity. What do you consider the identity of the Christian church to be in the history of God’s people in the world?
00:26:33:23 – 00:26:56:38
Michael Gewecke
Because think about the commands that God gave to the people of Israel that was directly connected to first being led by Moses. And you had, you know, Joshua and you had that period. And then, you know, that moved into a monarchy. So the people were governed from that royal pattern, which God told them you shouldn’t do. And the people demanded that they needed to have.
00:26:56:38 – 00:27:21:34
Michael Gewecke
Right? And that brought with all of its concerns. Then you go into the prophetic period where there wasn’t there were good things, there were bad things that are prophets who are saying these things that that you should do, you should do. Amongst that whole journey. You have to ask yourself, at what point are Christians going to translate the law into our present context, which is radically different from all of those previous contexts, right?
00:27:21:34 – 00:27:58:21
Michael Gewecke
So when you think of our modern values of people having a vote, people having protected right to speech, these kinds of things, that’s not a 1 to 1 relationship in the society in which these laws were given and intended to function. So it becomes really messy when Christians argued for theology, and actually this happened in the 20th century, some very prominent reformed theologian were working on that idea, and they ran up against the problem that they couldn’t figure out a consistent way to build a bridge between those realities.
00:27:58:35 – 00:28:37:55
Michael Gewecke
How do we not end up just picking and choosing the things that we would like to have as the as the rule and actually have some kind of systemic theological bridge between the two. And so as that century went on, by the by the end of the 20th century, largely reformed theological voices came to say that that we should uphold this idea of the moral law, specifically as we see in the Ten Commandments, and that that the goal of trying to translate ceremonial and civil laws into our present context looks often more like the person doing the translating that the Lords themselves.
00:28:38:07 – 00:28:50:36
Michael Gewecke
And so reformed voices became very skeptical of that and began to focus very heavily on the moral law itself. What can we learn from it? And that actually goes quite deep in the conversation.
00:28:50:47 – 00:29:22:37
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And so I think one way to think of this is, yes, if we look at the laws, there is some wisdom, there’s good practical advice. But the law itself in the faith was always understood to be more than that. It was always understood to be conditions of covenant. So when we now come and pick laws and say, Well, this one’s good, we should still keep doing it because it’s good for society, we are doing something.
00:29:22:42 – 00:29:48:52
Clint Loveall
We are coming from an angle that the original law wasn’t meant to do, and we just have to we just have to confess. We just have to admit that we’re doing that. Certainly there are commandments, there are good ideas for society. What that’s not at heart what they represented to people of faith. So let me stop there for a minute before we get into this next section.
00:29:49:04 – 00:30:22:45
Clint Loveall
Let me just stop and ask if there are comments, questions. Is there something that hasn’t made sense? Is there something you want more information on? Okay. There is a man named John Calvin pretty important to us. John Calvin comes along. He thinks long and hard about the long before John Calvin general rule was there were two uses of the law.
00:30:22:49 – 00:30:47:51
Clint Loveall
Now we have to make a shift here. We’re no longer talking about types of the law. We’ve changed the heading uses of the law. And when we talk about which law we’re using, we’re exclusively talking about the moral law. So the laws that are binding on people of faith, the laws that are an expression of covenant behavior, that there are three ways that they can be used.
00:30:47:51 – 00:31:24:36
Clint Loveall
In other words, Christians had to struggle with, do we need the law on this side of the cross? Do we need the law? Can’t we just follow Jesus? Do we still need rules? We know that the rules don’t save us. So what is the place of law in the Christian worldview? And as Calvin applied himself to this, he came up with three categories, two of which were well-established, and one that he kind of was the first he invented it.
00:31:24:36 – 00:31:50:12
Clint Loveall
I mean, certainly he gave it voice. So the first use is one we would call. And again, sorry about. The word had a delayed pedagogical means teaching. It’s the teaching aspect of the law. But what does the law teach us? The law teaches us what is right except for Calvin. What the law teaches us is that we are sinful.
00:31:50:16 – 00:32:13:43
Clint Loveall
In other words, Calvin said that the best the first thing the law does is convict this of our said. We see do not and we admit, I’ve done that. We see, you know, thou shall. And we say, yeah, I haven’t done that. We hear, you know, love your neighbor and all those we hear those moral expectations God has.
00:32:13:48 – 00:32:37:27
Clint Loveall
And we have to confess that we have not met them. And this for Calvin is the first use of the law. When we examine the law, it forces us to admit that we fall short. The law shows us, therefore, the depth of our sin, kind of a mirror in which we see the real story about ourselves. We have to admit that we’re broken.
00:32:37:31 – 00:33:14:58
Clint Loveall
And Calvin says that that’s the law’s intent to bring us to a place where we’re ready to confess that we need a savior, we need deliverance. We cannot help ourself because we can’t follow the law. This this series that we started this morning, enrollments. If you want to dig deep into what Paul thinks of the law in its place, that’s the place to turn what Calvin says the first use of the law is to teach us that we are sinful and so that that one’s out there and well-established.
00:33:15:03 – 00:33:45:52
Michael Gewecke
Now the next one could be a little tricky. He talks about the political use of the law, and maybe political is not a helpful word for us with our understanding of that. But Calvin understood that the church always lives with human relationships, and so what he meant by political was the human community, and his ideal was that the law not only convicts us of what’s true, we’re sinful, we can’t meet the bar that the law sets, but also we need the law to help set ground rules to protect the communities in which we live.
00:33:45:52 – 00:34:16:15
Michael Gewecke
So the commandments then become, for us, an organizing structure so that people within the Christian community can be protected. And that that because Calvin lived with his project in Geneva and other things like that, he he generally thought not that the law here should be outsourced and embedded in it like that. A king of Germany could take this and turn this into a sort of civil religion.
00:34:16:28 – 00:34:37:22
Michael Gewecke
He meant the idea that whenever a wise ruler turned to the commandments, they would find something of value for their people. But in general, the commandments do have moral wisdom that if used well by by civil authorities, that that could have a positive impact in the protection of people and communities.
00:34:37:22 – 00:34:45:42
Clint Loveall
Yeah, essentially the law formed a guide for those who ruled.
00:34:45:46 – 00:35:12:56
Michael Gewecke
On doing the next one. All right. So let’s talk about the normative use of the law. This is a really, really interesting thing. So this is where Calvin is striking out and he’s doing something new. He’s giving us a new perspective of the law, or at least he’s giving voice to it. And this is not a general use when when when Calvin talks about the normative use of the law, he’s talking about the Christian reception and Christian uses of the law.
00:35:13:01 – 00:35:44:28
Michael Gewecke
And here the idea is that the law is not negated in Jesus Christ is not wiped out, but it still matters. And the idea is that after faith, the law not only shows us the bar that we can’t hit, but it’s transformed into the life model that we seek to live in. It becomes a road that the law becomes the path that Christians take that leads us closer and closer to Christ like perfection in our life.
00:35:44:33 – 00:36:07:17
Michael Gewecke
And so it paints us a picture, gives us an image. If you’re going to be more like Jesus at the end of your life than when you began, what will it look like? Like the law. It’ll look like the the sort of pattern of the Ten Commandments. And you might be surprised by this, actually, because if you know Calvin and, you know, reformed theology, you know, he makes the case very strongly.
00:36:07:17 – 00:36:31:39
Michael Gewecke
The law does not say, dude, you don’t get to do works and get on the other side. But what he does say is, by the grace of Christ, when you find yourself on the other side, now the law is suddenly your guide and your end. They resource it becomes for you a pathway to deeper discipleship and the ordering matters, but it becomes a normative or a what we mean by that.
00:36:31:39 – 00:36:36:07
Michael Gewecke
It becomes a pattern by which we are called as Christians to live our life.
00:36:36:12 – 00:37:10:06
Clint Loveall
One scholar, I think, said something helpful that in Christ the Commandments become descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, they’re not just the ruler that measures whether we’re being faithful. They’re a picture of what being faithful means. And Calvin said, only Christians can use the law this way. You have to be in the covenant of grace in order to understand the rules this way, that that they become what the forgiven life looks like.
00:37:10:06 – 00:37:40:34
Clint Loveall
And this is a thoroughly Presbyterian idea. I mean, there are we’re not the only ones who hold it, but this is deeply embedded into who we are as faith people. This dramatically informs us of how we think of the commandments. And it does so in a couple of ways. If you if you know your Bible a little bit, if you know your New Testament, you’ll know that Jesus quotes a couple of the Ten Commandments.
00:37:40:39 – 00:38:09:42
Clint Loveall
But when he does, he says, you heard this, what? I tell you this. And in every case he adds to the commandment, he, the original commandment, don’t murder. And he makes it don’t be angry. And he takes the original commandment, Don’t commit adultery and he makes it don’t have lost. So when Jesus brings the commandments to us, he He brings them.
00:38:09:46 – 00:38:43:41
Clint Loveall
He makes them harder. So it’s not just then about the check mark. It is about the goal. Don’t don’t step over the idea. So in other words, we find in this third use of the law that the law is far bigger than the simple statement of it, right? That we can’t just say yes or no. I’ve done that.
00:38:43:46 – 00:39:17:38
Clint Loveall
I’ve never made an idol. Don’t make for yourself an idol check. Not once. Why ever going down carved an idol? What have I been guilty of? Idolatry. Yes. Over and over and over. And so it doesn’t make the law easier for Christians. It shows us a deeper picture of what the law means and our confession. Westminster confession, which will use quite a bit in this study, does a nice job with this.
00:39:17:38 – 00:39:44:42
Clint Loveall
You know, the Westminster confession, it all in the each of the it lists the commandment and then it gives you a paragraph or more of what the commandment me like, for instance, do not steal turds into don’t charge interest. When you own people, things don’t grumble when somebody borrows. I mean, they did all this stuff that they attach to and making it impossible for us to say, Why don’t steal stuff?
00:39:44:47 – 00:40:08:24
Clint Loveall
Well, it depends what definition you’re using, perhaps. And so this idea is, I think, really, really helpful in Calvinism. John Calvin, he he he just changes he just re invents how Christians think about what it means that we have law.
00:40:08:29 – 00:40:38:37
Michael Gewecke
So this gets really, really, really practical. The law can be held by two different people and have two entirely different outcomes. To illustrate this, I want to ask a question or have any of you. We have people here who who I think may be of the age that you had this experience. Did anyone here get in trouble at school and have a ruler used on you?
00:40:38:42 – 00:40:41:08
Clint Loveall
No, I’m not answering that.
00:40:41:13 – 00:41:09:48
Michael Gewecke
Okay. So. So the ruler in that context was used as a thing a sharp rebuke, right? You did something wrong and you were struck by the ruler. That is one way to look at the law. But the law is a punitive force. It’s used against us. It shows us that we are not only wrong, but it is applied against to commit that wrong to us.
00:41:09:59 – 00:41:29:42
Michael Gewecke
We are found in our sinfulness, and that’s the end. Another way to look at the law as a ruler is that it’s the thing that you aspire to measure against. Did any of you, as your kids got older, mark on the door frames of your house as they got older, A child looks at that as a positive step forward.
00:41:29:42 – 00:42:00:32
Michael Gewecke
As they grow, as they continue to mature as a person. Both of those could be your understanding of the law. You could understand the law as a thing that points out that others and said, Russ, say it. The Lord Helen him hell and damnation. Or you could understand the law to be understood as a tool that helps guide one and inspire one to greater life and faith and that’s why I asked you the question is how does law function?
00:42:00:36 – 00:42:23:33
Michael Gewecke
Because that’s the question we’re going to have to wrestle with as we go throughout the commandments. If you think of as the ruler used as a punitive judgment, then you will tend to think of the law as a long list of checkboxes that either you can tick or you can’t write. And then you might think to yourself, Well, I haven’t committed adultery for a full decade.
00:42:23:33 – 00:42:57:03
Michael Gewecke
I’m doing great right? Or you might think that the law’s calling you to be a person of personal sexual purity, which is something that you’re called to each and every day. In one case, it might be a thing you’re avoiding and then another might be a thing that’s calling you forward. And that’s a lot of words. Let me summarize this like I do for when I’m whenever I explain this to our confirmation students, I always the way I talk about the law with them was that the law is, for us, a kind of boundary on the road.
00:42:57:03 – 00:43:28:57
Michael Gewecke
If you’ve ever drove through the mountains and you’ve driven on one of those roads that has no guardrail, I don’t know about you. My heart jumps through my chest as I’m trying to, like, you know, drive the closest thing to the cliff as possible. The law is a beautiful gift when you know that it’s there providing boundaries in your life, when, you know, like we have at the Spirit Lake Elementary School, we don’t let our kindergarten kids play on the playground with no fence next to Hill Avenue.
00:43:29:02 – 00:44:09:57
Michael Gewecke
That would be insane, right? What we do is we as Christians have this beautiful gift of the law given to us, which both reminds us of our brokenness and gives us a ruler that can inspire us to live the most whole human life possible. But the only way we can receive that is we if we come to the law with the humility to say, number one, that it’s for us, as in people of faith, that the business something you say with people on the other side of grace and in the altar, that part of that is the expectation that the law should make us more Jesus like and less selfish light, which as Christians have
00:44:09:57 – 00:44:31:53
Michael Gewecke
gone through time specifically, I think in some of our more recent conversations about the law, some of the people most passionately arguing for the Ten Commandments have been arguing for them to be standing. His judgment against, rather than an inspiration for faith to move forward. And so that’s not to say there’s not a place for both of those.
00:44:31:53 – 00:44:47:21
Michael Gewecke
I think there there is a conversation to be had there. But to say what you bring to the conversation and an expectation is likely what you’re going to get out of it, I think it’s worth reading our minds toward that as we move into the specific commandments and the future.
00:44:47:25 – 00:45:10:50
Clint Loveall
And so the reason we go through all this background is that in the next coming weeks, we’re going to unpack the commandments. We’ll try to do two a week and we’ll just work in order. So the first two weeks will be in that first table, the first four Commandments, and we are going to almost exclusively think about the Ten Commandments from this idea of the moral law.
00:45:10:55 – 00:45:51:37
Clint Loveall
And Calvin’s third use or normative use of the law. When there are civil considerations or considerations outside of the church, we’ll try to do some history. We’ll try to have we’ll touch on those conversations. But our primary focus is what do the what do these laws, these commandments, say to people of faith to guide their faith? And we will do our best, guided by our tradition, to expand the laws, to hear the full scope of what they offer us as we move forward and the path they set for us.
00:45:51:52 – 00:46:27:54
Clint Loveall
It’s not that the law doesn’t have some general purpose, it does, but it’s our covenant law within our covenant faith. And that’s where we’re going to spend the vast majority of our time to understand how that law expands and what it calls us to in the largest sense, one of the great gifts that that reformed thinkers have given the church, I think, is this idea that the laws are more than laws.
00:46:27:59 – 00:47:05:49
Clint Loveall
They are invitations to be covenant people. They are not just simply rules. They are a path toward Christian character. And if if we come out of the Ten Commandments and we can recite them, but we don’t understand what they call us to, then I’d say we’ve largely missed our opportunity. So I know this is probably not the most interesting stuff you’ve ever heard, but I want you to understand why we go the way that we do and how I think our tradition helps us get there.
00:47:05:54 – 00:47:09:09
Clint Loveall
So that’s what we’ll be up to in the next several weeks.
00:47:09:14 – 00:47:31:54
Michael Gewecke
I’ll be really, really, really brief with this, but we really I want to make sure that we we pull out that point that Clint just made is that for many of us, the law was a thing that we learned as children that stood over us as a thing that we we wanted generally to be moral people. No one wakes up wanting to be an evil person.
00:47:31:58 – 00:47:39:02
Michael Gewecke
All right? And so when we what.
00:47:39:07 – 00:47:59:48
Clint Loveall
I was just reflecting on the differences in our childhood, some of us looked at law because we want to know exactly where the line was and know when we got really close to it. But yeah, I’m sure your way is good to some.
00:47:59:52 – 00:48:34:04
Michael Gewecke
Some of us don’t wake up wondering how far we can push it. No, the point I make is very simple that the law for us can be a beautiful symbol of belonging. And I’m sure in every one of your families you have those symbols, whether you have thought of them or not. Like, for instance, when you’re watching the Super Bowl game, which team you can look for, the team you can’t, or the rules that you had for your kids that your kids came home from school said, Well, my friends don’t have to do that.
00:48:34:04 – 00:49:12:51
Michael Gewecke
You said, Well, they got better parents or whatever it was, right? We have these things as Christians, as gifts. Well, we’ve been given these community boundaries. We’ve been given these laws that show us what it looks like to live in the family. And that’s the beautiful gift of been given them. So the question as we move forward then, is do we think of the law as a thing that stands over us, seeking to judge us, to strike us what the ruler, or instead do we think of the law as an opportunity today to be more and more like Jesus?
00:49:12:55 – 00:49:40:04
Michael Gewecke
Do you understand it to be an invitation calling you deeper into Christian community? Because if that’s the way that the law functions in this idea of the normative use, then the law can become for you an actual source of spiritual invitation and joy as opposed to a chore. Instead, you wondering, is God looking over, readying to or ready to bring wrath down upon this thing that I did wrong?
00:49:40:12 – 00:50:07:35
Michael Gewecke
The question is, can I today be more gracious? Can I be more giving, which is the antithesis to the law? Don’t steal, right? It can. The law can actually turn and become an invitation and I think that as we turn to it that way, it both changes its its tone. It also makes it a thing that we can incorporate into our our daily relationship with God as opposed to this or this law at once.
00:50:07:44 – 00:50:10:25
Michael Gewecke
And try not to forget it type idea.
00:50:10:30 – 00:50:44:12
Clint Loveall
Yeah I think essentially pre Christ the law is a quote post Christ the law is a map so so where does it where does it lead us. And that’s what we’ll that’s what we’ll wrestle with. Comments, questions, thoughts. We’ll do our best to make this this study opportunities for discussion again sorry, a lot of lecturing tonight. A lot of church stuff history.
00:50:44:16 – 00:51:07:36
Clint Loveall
But we we felt like that was where we needed to start to move on. So thank you for hanging in there with us. Thanks again. Food people to sign up for next week is over on the shelf. And also, I believe Megan has posted it online. So whichever way you’re comfortable signing up, if you can help us next week with food, that is deeply appreciated.
00:51:07:40 – 00:51:26:29
Clint Loveall
Thank you all for your time and have a great week. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast. We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have, lots of things you can listen to.
00:51:26:29 – 00:51:32:42
Clint Loveall
We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.
00:51:32:47 – 00:51:51:39
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.
00:51:51:52 – 00:52:25:17
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you if you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube.com slash f PC Spirit Lake. There you can comment and engage with us or if you would prefer to do that without going to YouTube, you can actually just click the link in the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.
00:52:25:28 – 00:52:34:33
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.