by Angus Harley

“They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord” (Luke 1:6), it is said of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist. In an earlier article, I briefly commented on Psalm 119 from a NCT perspective, tying it in with Psalm 51. The reader will notice that I did not say a lot about the psalmist’s love for the Law of Moses. Luke 1:6 refers to a similar love for God’s Law given to Moses. Let me state from the outset, therefore, that as NCTers we cannot avoid the plain and overt teaching that the Law here is seen as an instrument of grace for Zechariah and Elizabeth, and that they loved this Law. But why this love? And how do we reconcile it with Paul’s theology in Galatians in particular?

I’m going to begin with what this verse does not mean. It does not mean that Zechariah and Elizabeth actually kept every commandment of the Mosaic Law perfectly.

NOT PERFECT OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW OF MOSES

The most obvious contextual proof of this view is that Zechariah was a sinner. By implication, his wife was, too.

Zechariah and Elizabeth as sinners

If Zechariah were morally blameless in keeping the Mosaic Law, perfect in obedience to its every commandment, why did Zechariah not believe the angel (1:20)? This was the unbelief of a believer (Mark 9:24). It might be said in response to this that, Zechariah’s interaction with the angel was not determined by the Law. This is accurate. That being said, the Law demanded that the ‘believer’ in love keep its commandments. With that in mind, it would be stretching credulity to its limits to think that someone could pull off perfect obedience to the Law of Moses, but not to those directions and moral matters that are not listed in the Mosaic Law. If disobedience of the flesh came through in regard to matters outside of the Mosaic Law, disobedience will inevitably come through in relation to the Law. For it is the same person with the same flesh! That is why Paul informs us that the purpose of the Law of Moses was to expose sin in the Jews (Gal.3:19-22 ; Rom.7:7-12; see Heb.9:15-16), for it was not possible to accomplish righteousness via Law obedience (Gal.2-4; Rom.2-7; 10).

Elizabeth does not escape the charge of Law-breaker, either. The entire cultic system of the temple, based as it was on the Law, had as its premise that the Jews were sinners. Zechariah was a priest in that system, so that he and his wife belonged to the priestly caste of the Levites. The constant need of animal sacrifices for sin demonstrated that the Old-Covenant Law’s form of righteousness had no ability to transform the sinner, or to bring true, spiritual forgiveness (Rom.8:1-3; Heb.8:6-9; 10:2-3).

The fact that Elizabeth and Zechariah were blamelessly walking in all the commandments of the Law does not impact their innate sinfulness, or their inability to keep the Law of Moses perfectly. Godly Daniel cried out to the Lord for him to forgive Israel and himself for violating the Law’s commandments (Dan.9). Isaiah, the godly priest, said that both he and the Israelites were unclean (Isa.6). Joshua the High Priest’s garments were covered in excrement (Zech.3:1-4). The Law exposed sin and the flesh. That was its job.

Not the Pharisees’ model of Law-righteousness

In the Gospels, Jesus is constantly banging heads with the Pharisees. They were the ‘masters of the Law’. Yet, not even they could pull of perfect Law obedience. Indeed, we will see that their Law-based system revealed the innate problem with the Law: it could not bring spiritual transformation.

It is standard to maintain that the Pharisees did not interpret the Law properly. They abused the Law, turning it into a form of legalism.

This criticism is very true in respect of their disregard for the weighty matters of the Law such as love, mercy, and justice, for they chose to focus on the lesser matters such as tithing and washings. Even so, the above representation fails to pinpoint that the Pharisees knew the Law inside-out, and were its supreme, appointed, teachers. Jesus, in other words, does not slate their actual teaching or understanding of the Law, as it turns out, but their inability to practice what they taught (Matt.22:2-3; see Rom.2).

The Pharisees’ hermeneutic was rather straightforward, yet, hopelessly wooden and artificial. To them, the Mosaic Law was the touchstone, arbiter, and judge, for everything. The OT record of God’s promises to the fathers, the various other covenants, and the examples of mercy, justice, and love recorded outside of the Mosaic Law in the rest of the OT, were all sifted and graded by a wooden interpretation of the Mosaic Law. To the Pharisee, the promises given to the fathers were to be understood in how they applied to Israel as a Law-honoring nation. The Law was Israel’s law, setting them apart from the heathen nations. Similarly, if the Israelite wanted to know what love was, or mercy, or justice, he need only consult the Law itself. The Law was the Pharisee’s ‘bible’, his measuring stick and divine light. Isn’t that what the psalmist taught in Psalm 119, thought the Pharisee?

The perfect example of this severely restricted model of Pharisaical Law-righteousness is found in Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan. In complete ‘faithfulness’ to Yahweh, in ‘love’ to him, according to his Law, both the priest and the Levite walked by the badly battered man lying on the ground. After all, he was perhaps a robber, a ‘sinner’, and if not, then he was physically issuing blood and spit, covered in dirt- thoroughly unclean by the standards of the Mosaic Law. It would not do to touch this man, therefore; nor would it be a mercy to help him, because surely, if he were a Jew, he needed to be ‘processed’ as an unclean one via the rules of Moses (Luke 10:30-37). Plainly, to the mind of the religious zealot, the Law had all the answers! The Pharisees were so ‘into’ the Law in the above way that they became experts at parsing just exactly how it applied to tithing herbs (Luke 11:42). They were the real experts in the Law!

In essence, the Pharisees’ practice of the Law was similar to Roman Catholic liturgical practice. It was ‘in the doing’ (Latin: ex opera operato) of the Law lay the virtue, just as we find in Roman Catholic liturgical practice. Consequently, the more abstract and spiritual virtues such as faith, mercy, love, and justice were measured minutely by the Law, and as a result, they were set aside in favor of the physical and mechanical carrying out of that Pharisaically adjudged Law. What we today call in theology, ‘legalism’.

This bloated and hyper-exaggerated form of the Mosaic Law of the Pharisees was due to the Pharisee’s own devices. Notwithstanding, let us not forget that the Mosaic Law was a body of commandments that when taken in themselves exposed sin and unvelied the Law’s own innate inability to spiritually transform anyone. What the Pharisees had done in an artificial, yet spectacular, manner was reveal the intense and unrelenting standards of this Law and its entire network of commandments. This leads us to the next sub-point, concerning the Old Covenant’s relationship to the Law.

The Mosaic Law was Old Covenant law

More often than not, Evangelicals comment upon the Law in a manner that abstracts it from its Old Covenant setting. It is critical to understanding the Gospels, and therefore to Luke 1:6, that we recall the Old Covenant nature of the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was the law of the Mosaic, or Old, Covenant (). Paul makes this clear in Galatians 3-4 and in 2 Corinthians 3. Certain consequences flow from this union. The Mosaic Law was not, therefore, an addition to this Covenant, nor a member of it that could be separated from it, either in part of the whole. We can speak of the Covenant-Law, or Law-Covenant, meaning the Mosaic Law-Covenant. To refer to the Mosaic Law was tantamount to saying the Old Covenant, and vice versa. They stood or fell together, therefore. This is a vital fact, for we know that the Old Covenant failed, and its Law was broken by Israel. Indeed, because of this a new covenant was required that had a law written on the heart of its members (Jer.31:31-34; 2 Cor.3; Heb.8). The Law bound Jews in sin. The Old Covenant was phased out, and so, inevitably, was its Law. It’s value after the introduction of the New was that as Scripture it contributed to the overall witness to God’s plan of redemption in Christ Jesus (as in the book of Hebrews). The Law also serves to expose sin in anyone foolishly attempting to keep its fleshly Jewish standard.

There are two monumental doctrinal ramifications coming from this Covenant-Law relationship. First, the traditional Evangelical habit of teaching that the the Mosaic Law continues to act, in some way, after some fashion, as a moral and spiritual force is to be repudiated. The Law is Covenant-Law; it disappeared entirely with the entrance of the New Covenant. Even the Ten Words were no longer required, for they were the heart of the Old Covenant. Secondly, on a Christological level, we have to radically reassess what we consider to be Jesus’ obedience. For it is typically assumed that because Jesus was a Jew that he came to keep the Law of Moses perfectly. He didn’t; or, more to the point, he couldn’t! Let us not forget that Luke 1 is relating that John the Baptist is going before Jesus as one who was in the spiritual form of Elijah going before, and preparing the way for, the Lord God himself (Mal.4:5; Luke 1:17). Jesus was not just another Jew, therefore, ‘keeping the Law’, even a super-charged, Messiah-Jew. He was God himself in the flesh! This is the Lord who said in Jeremiah 31:31-34 that he was going to disband the Old Covenant and replace it with a New one. The Old Covenant Law was irreparably broken, and for that reason a New was required. Why would the Lord of the promised New Covenant come to restore the Old Covenant that was already, hundreds of years before, pronounced broken beyond repair? Why would this Lord uphold a form of righteousness taken from that failed Covenant? Why would the Lord of salvation commit himself to perfect obedience to a Covenant-Law that was incapable of even a slither of spiritual transformation? This brings me to my last comment on the failure of the Old Covenant and its Law.

The Old Covenant and its Law were given as a covenant of the flesh, of this world. The Law as a whole was part of a fleshly covenant with fleshly rules for life in this world. It pertained to a physical nation in a material land, and to material and physical promises and blessings and curses (Deut.27-31). The fleshliness of the Law and the Old Covenant is brought out very clearly in 2 Corinthians 3, where Moses’ ministry of the Law is said to kill. Moreover, the glory that came with it was temporary and merely on the physical face of Moses. And, to cap matters off, the Ten Words were written on actual stone, not on spiritual hearts. As the whole Law did pertain to this world, it had no innate power to transform spiritually; it could not propel its fleshly Jewish followers to true obedience before God (Heb.8:8-9). The Mosaic Law ‘fed’ flesh-obedience, encouraged it, but in doing so exposed sin and spiritual disobedience via the flesh. Consequently, even if perfect Law obedience were achieved by Jesus, what would he have obtained? He would have ‘purchased’ for the physical nation of Israel- because he was a ‘Jew’- all the material, physical, this-world, blessings related in Deuteronomy. These physical Jews would have put their faith in this thoroughly Jewish Messiah of the Promised Land. Not a scintilla of any spiritual and heavenly blessing would have been obtained by Jesus. At the very, very best, the nation of Israel would have become a thoroughly perfect nation according to the fleshly order given in the Law, eternally and perfectly upholding that Law within the earthly terrain of the land of Israel.

In the second half of the article, it is explained what it meant that Zechariah and Elizabeth walked in the entirety of the Law blamelessly.

WALKING BLAMELESSLY IN MOSES’ ENTIRE LAW

The heart of Luke 1:6 is that Zechariah and Elizabeth understood by faith in God what the Law was all about, that it was not an end in and of itself, but a light concerning God’s redemption and righteousness.

Faith via obedience to whole Law

Psalm 119 is a psalm of joy and delight in the Lord’s Law. It is described as a light to the psalmist’s feet, on his spiritual walk with God. The Law of the Old Covenant was Yahweh’s rule for Israel. He measured their love for him, their faith in him, according to their faithfulness to that Law. A blatant disregard for the Law was tantamount to hating Yahweh. Sabbath observance became a key form of love-obedience. The Pharisees ‘corrected’ their fleshly fathers’ disregard for the Law, and put in its place fleshly obedience to it, such as described before. As just stated, this was fleshly obedience, not faith obedience. It did not proceed from love to God and faith in him.

It was because the believer lived by faith when walking in the Law that he was not obsessed with keeping it perfectly in the manner of the Pharisees. Like David in Psalm 51, he was a sinner. He understood that the Jewish, Old Covenant, believer saw that the Law’s external and physical nature was pointing away from itself to true, internal, spiritual forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption. That is why David said that the Law’s sacrifices were not of any value in themselves. They had to be preceded by their spiritual counterpart of spiritual cleansing that was done internally. The role of the Law in that Old Covenant setting, according to Psalm 51 and David’s testimony, was that it was a signpost to the greater path of spiritual forgiveness; and a second feature of the Law was that, it existed to measure the true believer’s faith by the physical and identifiable means of Law-obedience. After David confesses his sin in Psalm 51, after referring to internal and spiritual cleansing, he states that God will bless the walls of Jerusalem and bless those faithful who do give offerings to him. In this way, David’s desire for Law-obedience expresses in a physical and material way the preexistence of the internal and spiritual life of faith.

In walking in the Law in this way, by faith, Elizabeth and Zechariah knew that obedience to the entirety of the Law’s commandments was but a wonderful opportunity to showpiece faith and love to God in a multitude of ways.

Whilst we are on this aspect of obedience to all of Moses’ Law, we can deal with another misreading of Luke 1:6. It is commonly stated that Luke 1:6 implies that Zechariah and Elizabeth, although they were not, nor could not, keeping the moral part of Moses’ Law perfectly, they kept its ceremonial parts perfectly. This view is in error because, first of all, it divides up Covenant-Law into parts. As we saw before, this Covenant-Law stood or fell as a whole. After all, this was the nature of any covenant stipulations, whether divine or human covenants. The entire body of expectations of any covenant were to be met for the covenant to be honored. This was the simple, yet profound, core of any covenant- human or divine. One could not parse, or remove, any stipulation or expectation: all had to be honored, and all commandments had to be obeyed in their full scope. The second failure in regard to splitting up the Law is that this view takes away from the wisdom of God: as said already, the believer’s obedience to the Law of Moses was showpiecing faith, so that every commandment became an opportunity for that faith to shine. Thirdly, it was never about ‘keeping the Law perfectly’ for the true believer; but it was for the Pharisee!

Faith and the greater form of redemption

We haven’t sucked the marrow out of this one, quite yet. At the heart of faith of the Old Covenant believer was an understanding that Law itself was but one form of God’s blessing to Israel. The Pharisees, by contrast, paid lip service to that fact. The redemption and salvation of God that true Law-obedience pointed toward was not located on earth, or found through mere obedience to the Law of Israel. For it came from above, not from below. It was heavenly and spiritual, not earthly and physical. We can compare Zechariah and Elizabeth to Job (Job 1:8), Noah (Gen.6:9), and Enoch- who walked with God and God took him to himself (Gen.5:22-24). None of these had the Law of Moses, and they all loved the Lord and walked blamelessly according to his will and ways as revealed to them. They lived by faith, looking beyond the physical and the present. Hebrews 11 states of Abraham and all the OT saints that by faith they looked beyond the present, beyond any physical, this-world, dimensions of the OT’s religion, because this world did not, nor could not, deliver up any form of spiritual reward and life. The OT believer saw beyond the present to the heavenly and spiritual future. David’s faith, according to Psalm 51, grasped that there was a redemptive and salvific reality that was outside of the Law of Moses, to which it pointed.

From the OT perspective, this spiritual, other-world, redemption and salvation was to be executed in a finalized and complete manner by the Messiah. The embodiment of true, OT, faith was to rest in the promise of the Messiah to come. Therefore, the Law also served to magnify the way of heavenly and spiritual redemption to come through the Messiah (we will come back to this point).

The Gospels as transitions narratives

Another argument cited in favor of the continuation in some form of the Mosaic Law today is that these Old Covenant believers melded together faith with the Law; it was natural for them. So, this relationship ‘in some way’ applies today to Jews of faith, or even people of faith.

It is a mistake to measure the content of Luke 1:6, or the Law’s nature and current status, merely by what the OT/Old Covenant saints understood about these things. Of course, it can unhesitatingly be concluded that Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, John the Baptist, Anna, and Simeon, all understood an OT version of the Gospel of the Christ, and that they all relied on the Law of Moses. No doubt! Even with this in mind, a cursory reading of any Gospel reveals that these ‘Old Covenant’ believers (for that is what they were at the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel) did not come to terms with the full import of this New Covenant Gospel until after Pentecost. John the Baptist massively illustrates this disconnect in Luke 7:18-25. It would seem that, even during the years of the Gospel’s introduction during Jesus’ time of earth, these believers held a hermeneutic that bound the Law and the Gospel tightly together. However, as we will presently see from Luke 1-2 itself, Luke’s Gospel shows that with Jesus’ appearance there is the creation of a gap between the Old and the New, and that gap gets ever wider as the ‘river’ of the Gospel of Luke continues to its end. For, Jesus took his disciples with him on a path of transition from Old to New, from a Law dominated model to a purely spiritual, heavenly one of faith that stripped away the physical format of the Law of Moses and its Covenant. It was no longer to be about the ‘walls of Jerusalem’, the ‘Promised Land’, or offerings to the Lord, for the New Covenant was sealed in the blood of the Lamb and brought the blessings of eternal, resurrection, life from the kingdom of heaven.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, the above transition is indicated. Moses and Elijah are speaking to Jesus about his ‘exodus‘ (Gk.,exodos); he is not discussing with them the Mosaic Law, or the Pentateuch, nor the OT prophets (Luke 9:30-31). The entirety of the OT Scripture- the Law (Pentateuch) and the Prophets (rest of OT) (Luke 16:16)- were until John. He was the transition figure/prophet who went before the Lord. Consequently, the entirety of the OT writings witness to Jesus Christ, not the other way around (Luke 16:29, 31; 24:27, 44).

The ‘stage’ for God’s New-Covenant redemptive work

The idea that Luke’s Gospel puts forth is that the OT, Old Covenant setting, especially of its temple religion, are comparable to a stage, with so many Law ‘props’, upon which the New Covenant ‘drama’ of redemption is ‘enacted’.

For example, the spiritual values lying ‘behind’ the temple religion, such as taught in Psalm 51, are present here in Luke 1-2 (and, indeed, throughout Luke’s Gospel). There is the obvious point that Zechariah is in the temple at the hour of prayer, acting in his priestly function. He was before the altar of incense when the angel appeared to him. Perhaps to the Jews the hour of prayer and the altar of incense were combined as one ideologically (see Rev.5:8; 8:3-4). The angel does not present a way ahead in the Law itself, however, but takes us to the gift of John the Baptist. Similarly, the barrenness of Elizabeth recalls the many OT examples of godly women without a son. In particular, Hannah’s example comes to the mind, for she was in the temple praying for a son, and the Lord answered her prayer (1 Sam.1). It is not the Law that provides the solution to her barrenness, but it is God’s mercy and grace in giving a son. We can jump to Luke 2, also. It relates how Jesus is presented in the temple according to the custom of the Law, but afterward, having witnessed this, godly Simeon praised God for providing for the redemption of his people in this child, Jesus. The Law is the stage or background for the enactment of true redemption in Christ Jesus, but the Law is never in itself recorded as the source of righteousness, nor the way to redemption. Put simply: the Law is never redemptive or salvific in Luke’s Gospel!

As to Jesus himself, the Gospel transition, along with ‘acting’ on the ‘stage’ of the Law, are perfectly illustrated by his time as a boy in the temple. He uses the temple as an Old Covenant ‘prop’ to fellowship with his Father, and leaves aside his duty stated in the Law of Moses to honor and fear his earthly parents (Luke 2:41-51). Jesus was not in the temple to ‘keep the Law’, but to bring about the redemption of his heavenly Father, whose wider plan did not operate within the confines of the Mosaic Law. The Son was ‘visiting’ his Father’s Old Covenant home in the temple, no doubt talking to others about the redemption to come as promised in the OT Scriptures.

Just as in a drama the stage set is changed to make way for the next act, so Luke’s Gospel moves from the Law and the temple to outside of both. Luke 1-2 goes beyond the ‘stage’ of the temple into the hill country of Judaea (1:39), visiting with the shepherds outside in their fields (2:8), into ‘redneck’ Nazareth (1:26), and to Bethlehem, a non-Levitical town (2:4). Eventually, the Gospel of Luke takes us beyond Judaea into Samaritan territory, and we even read about Samaritan believers who are not bound in by Moses’ Law but who show love and mercy to their Jewish enemies!

The final ‘stage’ of redemption is implied in all the Gospels. It is heaven itself. Heaven is the true saints’ destination. It is possible that in all the hustle and bustle of the details of the Gospel that we forget that Jesus is the Son from above, and that his angels that are present in Luke 1-2 are citizens of that heavenly kingdom!