Abstract
I was reflecting during my walk this morning on the year so far. You might be reading this in the Spring of 2021, but as I write these words it is still November of the previous year. Yes, that year in which everything changed. After the drama of a winter General Election, the nation came together in 2019 to celebrate Christmas and to usher in a new decade. A fresh start. Who could have predicted that we would soon know more upheaval than had been seen in living memory? Soon we would become familiar with hitherto very unfamiliar things: empty shelves, face masks and hand gel. (And, of course, those daily tallies on the news.)
How did you spend your months in ‘lockdown’? My wife and I inadvertently found ourselves the owners of a seven-week-old Golden Retriever puppy, right at the end of March 2020! Terrible timing, I’ll admit, but she was a welcome distraction. I also seized upon the opportunity to examine carefully those Biblical passages that I had always wanted to study but could never quite find the time. Well, I suddenly had time to spare (in-between toilet training). I decided to look at Psalm 119 in detail—the longest of all the Psalms, and relevant to our reading from Exodus 20. Whilst in the latter we find the Decalogue, the ten commandments revealed to Moses, the former meditates on and extols the very same. The Psalmist asks the Lord to open his eyes ‘that I may behold wondrous things out of your law’ (Ps 119:18). ‘My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times’ (Ps 119:20), says the Psalmist, ‘I long for your precepts’ (Ps 119:40). He lifts up his hands towards the commandments, ‘which I love’ (Ps 119:48); he does not delay to keep them (Ps 119:60). He doesn’t just believe in God’s commandments (Ps 119:66)—he delights in them (Ps 119:16), so much so that ‘the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces’ (Ps 119:72). In short, the Psalmist concludes: ‘I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold’ (Ps 119:127).
In my experience, it is incredibly rare to hear the Word of God described like this in general, let alone the law of God specifically. It would be dismissed as rank ‘biblicism’ at best, or ‘legalistic’ at worst. In the contemporary Christian imagination, the commandments are often fodder for Sunday school memorisation or a foil for Gospel freedom. Only pharisees delight in divine commands; the true believer exults in spiritual liberty. Or so it’s thought. But of course, when Christ himself handles the law of God, we see him take a different tack. We do indeed see him reject legalistic traditions (Matt 15:6), and warn the scribes and Pharisees of a kind of obedience that neglects the ‘weightier matters’ (Matt 23:23ff.)—but we also see him cite chapter and verse, we see him act as the new law-giver in the style of Moses, and we see him identify the two greatest commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets (Matt 22:36ff.). ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them’ (Matt 5:17). Indeed, it is not hard to imagine Jesus as a young man reading Psalm 119 for himself and taking its words to heart. He who kept his way pure in accordance with the Word (Ps 119:9), who fixed his eyes on the commandments of his Father (Ps 119:15), who taught him the way of his statutes—he who was himself their goal (Ps 119:33).
This habit of finding in Christ the fulfilment of the Law was continued by the apostles (e.g., Rom 7:4), and it has often been a rich source of reflection throughout Church history. One is reminded of several Reformation-era paintings in the Protestant tradition. What Cranach the Elder’s ‘Law and Gospel’ (c. 1529
Many throughout Church history have sought to explain how the ten commandments foreshadow the manifold wisdom fulfilled in Christ. One example will have to suffice:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . .. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exo 20:8–11).
For the author of Hebrews, this command to rest on the seventh day was not just about modelling the pattern of creation or covenant faithfulness—it pointed to the greater rest that was to come, a Sabbath rest that still remains for the people of God (Heb 4:9). That rest is to be found in Christ, our great High Priest, who in his own body offered a single sacrifice for sins, who eventually ascends to sit in repose at the right hand of the Father (Heb 10:12). The Sabbath decreed in the law of God finds its fulfilment in the living Word of God. Augustine, inspired by these words in Hebrews and in Exodus 20, concludes his ‘City of God’ by saying that the resurrection of Christ prefigures this rest that yet remains for the people of God, ‘the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but also of the body’. When we are raised with Christ, then ‘we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end.’ (City of God XXII.30).
This is just one example of how the law of God described in Exo 20 finds its fulfilment in Christ. God’s people have heard in the fourth commandment the voice of Christ himself: ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’ (Matt 11:28). This voice has been heard throughout the ages. It calls to the oppressed and downtrodden; it speaks to the guilty and ashamed, and it is still being heard today, at a time of global anguish. It promises that there is rest for those who are anxious, comfort those who are grieving, joy for those who are depressed, and peace for the locked up, the locked down and the down-and-outs. Christ calls them all: ‘Come and find your Sabbath rest in me’.