So then, does God’s word teach that the Old Testament civil law was restricted in validity to Israel as a nation in redemptive covenant with God? Previous chapters have clearly shown that it does not. God judged nations outside of Israel for transgressing the standards of His law, and in His revelation to Israel. He encouraged the spreading of the law to the Gentile nations. In the New Testament, Christ endorsed every jot and tittle of the law of God (unless qualified by Scripture elsewhere): and Apostolic writers acknowledged the law of God as the standard for political ethics — even in the day of pagan Roman emperors. The redemptive history and national covenant enjoyed by Israel certainly set the Old Testament Jews apart from modern nations as significantly unique. But this does not mean that Israel was in every respect different from her neighbors or from nations today. Paul teaches in Romans 1 and 2 that the same moral standards revealed to Israel through “the oracles of God” were more generally revealed to all men through general or natural revelation. Israel did not have a unique moral code, as though God operated with a double standard for Israel and the Gentiles. Moreover, Israel was not completely different from modern nations or her Gentile neighbors, for like these others, Israel faced historical (pre-consummation) problems of crime, social justice, and punishment. The law of the Lord directed Israel as to the requirements of divine justice in such situations, and that law ought to be the standard of justice for crime and punishment everywhere else as well (even in nations that did not or do not have a corporate, redemptive covenant with God) — for social justice in God’s eyes is not racially variable or different from nation to nation. Justice is absolute. If the civil aspects of God’s law were meant only for Israel, as the critic says, then he should be asked to explain the New Testament’s apparent practice of taking the standards of political ethics from God’s law — and asked what the New Testament standard for political justice is, if not God’s commandments. Those who restrict the validity of the Old Testament law to Israel may not realize it, but their philosophic outlook is that of “cultural relativism,” where what counts as justice is adjusted from culture to culture. Those who press the argument that modern states are not bound to the civil aspects of God’s law since it was given in a national and redemptive covenant with Israel, will find that they cannot long maintain with consistency any of the Old Testament commandments today. Not only were the civil aspects of the law revealed in the same context of a national covenant, so also were the personal and in- terpersonal aspects of the law. If the passing away of the national covenant means the invalidation of those moral standards revealed within it, then we would lose even the ten commandments! If the judicial laws of the Old Testament are thought to have expired when God’s purposes for the Jewish nation were complete — that is, if only the “national” aspects of the national covenant have passed away — then we would be overlooking the justice of those laws and their full purpose, which included of being a model to other nations (Deut. 4:6-8). Besides, Gods word never draws such a distinction between the “personal” aspects of the law and the “political” aspects, as though the one were any more or less a reflection of God’s unchanging holiness than the other. Who are we to draw such a distinction on our own, with the aim of evading or laying aside a portion of those duties revealed by God? To read this into the text is to lord it over the word of the Lord!
