“This passage [Gal. 3:15-22] has much to teach us about the security of all who believe the gospel. They are all members of the true people of God, irrespective of racial background. This is a lesson the church still needs to learn. It also helps us to understand something of how to read the Old Testament from a Christian point of view. The Old Testament was God-given, and remains part of Christian scripture; let there be no doubt about that, no attempt to make Paul say anything else. But, precisely because of the Christian story of God’s dealings with his people from Abraham onwards, the regulations designed to keep Israel as it were in quarantine are now set aside. Not because they were bad, ill-judged, unnecessary or not intended by God; but because they were good, vital, effective and have now completed their task.”
- N. T. Wright
“the regulations designed to keep Israel as it were in quarantine are now set aside.”
What were regulations?
And perhaps a follow-up to the good bishop’s point is if the similar regulations in the NT will ever complete their task? At least, will they on this side of the coming of the fullness of the Kingdom of God?
“the regulations designed to keep Israel as it were in quarantine are now set aside. Not because they were bad, ill-judged, unnecessary or not intended by God; but because they were good, vital, effective and have now completed their task.”
Ask the people of Jericho if they were good. Seems that it is only time that separates Jew from Gentile.
Thanks for this quote, Mike. (What book is this from?) I love Luther, but it sometimes irritates me when he seems to denigrate the law. Wright offers a helpful counter-perspective.
I really enjoyed reading NT Wrights book The Last Word. This sounds like a quote from it.
The best statement I ever read on “the OT and the Christian” comes from John Bright: “The normative element in the Old Testament, and its abiding authority as the Word of God, rests not in its laws and customs, its institutions and ancient patterns of thinking, nor yet in the characters and events of which its history tells, but in that structure of theology which undergirds each of its texts and which is caught up in the New Testament and announced as fulfilled in Jesus Christ.”