ABSTRACT: What role does the law of Moses play in regulating Christian conduct? Following an interpretive strategy anticipated in the Psalms, exemplified in Jesus and Paul, and reflected in Lutheran and Reformed catechisms, Christians read old-covenant law as wisdom for living. Such an approach internalizes the law, takes careful notice of its basis in the order of creation and the character of God, and then makes expansive applications to the Christian life. Laws about tithing, stealing, and murder offer three test cases for reading the law as wisdom.

How Christians are meant to read the law of Moses is something of a puzzle. The apostle Paul addresses this question, but his letters present both critique and approval of the law. Paul describes the law as “holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12), a very positive gift of God (Romans 9:4), and he quotes it when regulating the conduct of believers in Christ (e.g., Deuteronomy 25:4 in 1 Corinthians 9:9). On the other hand, he speaks of the law as an enslaving power, increasing trespass and used by sin to bring about death (Galatians 4:1–10; Romans 5:20; 7:5).

A common solution to this tension is to posit distinctions between different parts of the law: The ceremonial laws are fulfilled in Christ, most of the civil laws are defunct (given that we do not live in a specially established theocracy), and the moral laws are still valid. However, the ancient Jews and Paul himself saw no such divisions in the law of Moses and regarded the first five books of the Bible as a unity. In addition, such divisions prove impractical since many laws defy simple classification. As Tom Schreiner writes, “Many of the so-called ceremonial laws have a moral dimension that cannot be jettisoned.”¹ The same goes for the civil laws, such as not muzzling an ox while treading out grain (Deuteronomy 25:4), a law from which Paul derives a moral lesson (see 1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Timothy 5:18).²

If Paul’s letters are marked by negative and positive statements about the law, the question to ask is not a content question — about which bits of the law he refers to in each case — but a hermeneutical question: In what sense or as what are we to read the law? Asking about the capacity in which or the force with which the law meets the Christian resolves the tension between the negative and positive material. Christians, according to Paul, do not read the law of Moses as law covenant, since we are “not under law” (Romans 6:14; Galatians 5:18). Instead, we read the law as wisdom for Christian living.³

In Romans 2, Paul says that Jews do the law (verse 25), observe the righteous requirements of the law (verse 26), transgress the law (verses 23, 25, 27), and possess the law as a written code (verse 27). Paul never says that Christians relate to the law in any of these ways, preferring instead the language of Christians fulfilling the law (e.g., Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14).⁴

Reading the law as wisdom is supported by both Paul and Jesus and can be illustrated from the treatment of the Decalogue in the Psalms. In addition, the historical Lutheran and Reformed catechisms approach the law in this way as well. As we will see, reading the law as wisdom actually presents a higher moral bar than reading it as a legal code to be obeyed and not transgressed.

The Law as Wisdom

Moses plants the seed of the law as wisdom in his description of the purpose of the law in Deuteronomy 4:6: “Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’” Psalms and Proverbs contain texts that similarly take the law to be a font of wisdom: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple” (Psalm 19:7); “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me” (Psalm 119:98); “The one who keeps the law is a son with understanding” (Proverbs 28:7).

The morality of the Mosaic law is based on creation’s moral order, the same basis of wisdom teaching elsewhere in the Old Testament. As Christopher Wright puts it, in the law of Moses, obedience is rendered not only to the God of covenant purpose and redemptive action but also to the God of created order.⁵ Genesis 1 presents creation as a place of order, system, and structure, “which provides an objective basis for the exercise of moral freedom and sets limits to moral relativism. . . . There is a basic shape to the world which we did not invent, and therefore a corresponding shape to the moral response required of us. . . . Morality, in biblical terms, is preconditioned by the given shape of creation.”⁶

Oliver O’Donovan likewise sees a close relationship between the law of Moses, wisdom, and the created order. In fact, it is a critical role of the law to make the moral implications of the order of creation more widely known:

The re-presentation of wisdom as Law declares, in fact, the central point of Israel’s faith, which is the meeting of the life-in-the-world with life-before-God. . . . Wisdom, with its cool observational detachment and its inherent restriction to the educated, was made immediately available in the form of Law. . . . In torah the moral authority of created order and the transcendent authority of the electing God were made one.⁷

According to O’Donovan, the law is a wise articulation of the created order, making reading it as wisdom a matter of reading with the grain.

The law is also associated with wisdom in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 10:11, Paul describes the law as “instruction” (nouthesia); in Romans 15:4, he says the law is a source of moral “teaching” (didaskalia). Both nouthesia and didaskalia have clear wisdom associations. Paul uses the cognate verbs, noutheteō and didaskō, in contexts indicating that instructing/admonishing and teaching are undertaken in conjunction with wisdom: “Him we proclaim, instructing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28); “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16).

A particularly enlightening example appears in 2 Timothy 3:16–17, where Paul explains the practical usefulness of Scripture, including the law: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (NRSV). Three of the four terms that explicate the usefulness of Scripture — “reproof” (elegmos), “correction” (epanorthōsis), and “training” (paideia) — are terms used in the Greek Old Testament for teaching that brings wisdom.

Paul reads the law as wisdom for living in the sense that he internalizes the law, makes reflective and expansive applications, and takes careful notice of its basis in the order of creation and the character of God. This can be seen in the way Paul makes use of the laws concerning tithing, stealing, and murder.

Tithing

The law of Moses legislates the practice of giving ten percent of your income (e.g., Leviticus 27:30–33). Yet when it comes to giving and sharing possessions, it is indeed striking that Paul does not enforce the law of tithing. In 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul talks against any form of compulsion when it comes to giving: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul recommends giving that is deliberate and proportional to income: “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income” (NIV), a principle shared with the laws of giving in the law (Deuteronomy 15:14). It would seem that Paul has been instructed by the notion of a tithe, even if he does not enforce it as law.⁸

“The law trains us for righteous living when we read it as wisdom.”

In 1 Timothy 6:17–18, Paul appeals to the generous character of God in creation as a motivation to give liberally: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.”

Paul does give commands (see 1 Timothy 6:18), but he also exposes their foundations in the order of creation and the character of God. And he has evidently been instructed by the law, as his appeal for proportionate giving suggests. But he does not enforce the old-covenant tithe.

Stealing

Paul mentions the subject of stealing three times in his letters. In Romans 2:17–24, he alludes to the Decalogue commandment not to steal and uses the language of legal obligation. The context proves significant here because in it Paul challenges his Jewish opponents to consider whether they transgress the commandments. According to Paul, the law remains a legal code for unbelieving Jews, one that must be obeyed and not transgressed.

In Romans 13:8–10, Paul cites the commandment not to steal in a discussion about how love fulfills the law. He does not say that Christians must “keep” the laws listed. Rather, Paul makes the point that freedom from the law does not lead to license because the obligation to love brings the law to completion. Paul makes the point that loving your neighbor is the goal of keeping the law. However, merely keeping the law (even those of the Decalogue, such as laws against adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting) does not mean that you will love your neighbor. Instead, if you really love your neighbor, you will do more than what the law specifies, fulfilling what Paul takes to be the law’s real intent.

The third text comes in Paul’s instructions to the Ephesian Christians not to steal: “Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy” (Ephesians 4:28 NRSV). Paul reflects on the responsibility to work (established in Genesis 2:15) in order to be able to share with the needy. His reflective application of the law against stealing in Ephesians 4:28 is instruction for living that exemplifies the reappropriation of the law as wisdom.

The Psalms’ use of the law makes an intriguing point of comparison to Paul’s reading of the law as wisdom. Gordon Wenham notes that “there is plenty of evidence that the psalmists know the Ten Commandments and place them at the heart of their ethical thinking.”⁹ The eighth commandment receives a sustained treatment in the Psalter. Stealing, especially from the poor, is often condemned. Particular psalms speak of the poor being plundered (Psalm 12:5), despoiled (Psalm 35:10), ambushed and seized (Psalm 10:9), and of evildoers eating up God’s people “as they eat bread” (Psalm 14:4). But such activity goes beyond what a criminal court would classify as stealing. This reckoning of economic exploitation as a kind of theft extends the literal and narrow sense of the commandment against stealing into prudential applications.

The Heidelberg Catechism makes similar moves in reading the commandment not to steal in questions 111 and 112. Not content to read the law as only forbidding “outright theft and robbery,” the catechism explains that “in God’s sight theft also includes all evil tricks and schemes to get our neighbor’s goods for ourselves . . . such as inaccurate measurements of weight, size, or volume; fraudulent merchandising; counterfeit money; [and] excessive interest. . . . God forbids all greed.” Further, the catechism teaches that the commandment not to steal, echoing Ephesians 4:28, obliges me to “work faithfully so that I may help the needy in their hardship.”¹⁰

Likewise, Luther’s Small Catechism makes an expansive application of the commandment not to steal: “What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income.”¹¹

Murder

How does Paul read the commandment against murder (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17)? The influence of the murder commandment in Romans offers another example of how Paul reads the law as wisdom.

Paul refers to the commandment not to murder on two occasions in Romans, employing the lexeme phon- (“murder”), which is used in the LXX murder commandment. The first comes in Romans 1:29–31, in a vice list that includes links to the Decalogue commandments against covetousness and rebellion against parents. The passage demonstrates that Paul continues to use the law as the means of condemning the conduct of those outside of Christ.

A full appreciation of the influence of the murder commandment in Paul’s moral teaching requires some attention to contemporary Jewish use of the commandment, along with the use of the commandment in the Old Testament.¹² In brief, murder was widely regarded as the quintessential anti-social sin, the opposite of love. The notion of murder was used as a metaphor to describe social injustice, including sins such as unrighteous anger and malicious speech.

With this in mind, Paul’s extensive use of other expressions for murder-related activity in Romans is significant. He describes sinners as those bent on murderous speech (“the venom of asps is under their lips,” Romans 3:13) and murderous deeds (“their feet are swift to shed blood,” Romans 3:15). He personifies sin and depicts it as a killer in his discussion of sin and the law (Romans 7:10). He refers to being killed through persecution (Romans 8:35–36; 11:3). And he warns the strong against destroying those who are weak in faith (Romans 14:13, 15, 20, 21). The influence of the murder commandment is profound, in spite of Paul nowhere saying or implying that believers are under the law.

Jesus’s exposition of the commandment not to murder in Matthew 5 is noteworthy for its internalized application. He judges hatred as tantamount to murder, a surface expression of something deeper (Matthew 5:21–22), and he warns that God does not accept the worship of those who are sinfully angry (Matthew 5:23–24).

The Psalms also show evidence of expansive application of the sixth commandment. Rather than being cited simply as a law against literal killing, the emphasis shifts to something more generally applicable — namely, depriving someone of their livelihood. Psalm 94:6 links murder to the broader theme of social justice: “They kill the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless.” In possibly more figurative uses of the imagery of murder, enemies in the psalms are compared to savage lions or dogs who devour their prey (Psalms 7:2; 17:12; 22:13, 16; 35:17) and to attacking bulls (Psalm 22:12).

The Heidelberg Catechism similarly undertakes expansive applications of the murder commandment, focusing on heart motivations: “I am not to belittle, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor — not by my thoughts, my words, my look or gesture, and certainly not by actual deeds.” It goes on, “By forbidding murder God teaches us that he hates the root of murder: envy, hatred, anger, vengefulness. In God’s sight all such are disguised forms of murder.” For the catechism, murder is the opposite of love: “By condemning envy, hatred, and anger God wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly toward them, to protect them from harm as much as we can, and to do good even to our enemies.”¹³

Similarly, Luther’s Small Catechism expands the application of the murder commandment beyond the taking of a life: “You shall not murder. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.”¹⁴

Written for Our Instruction

Believers in Christ are not under the law as a legal code. But the law of Moses is still valid as God’s inspired word. Reading it makes us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus and equips us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:15–17). The law trains us for righteous living when we read it as wisdom. Such a reading strategy is anticipated in the Psalms, exemplified by Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul, and reflected in Lutheran and Reformed catechisms.

There are three things to do to read the law as wisdom:

1. Internalize the law (Jeremiah 31:33).
2. Make reflective and expansive applications of its instructions.
3. Take careful note of its basis in the order of creation and the character of God.

Read this way, the Spirit of God will apply the law to our own lives and contexts. To quote Paul, the law of Moses was written “for our sake” (1 Corinthians 9:10) and “for our [moral] instruction” (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11).