Perfect, but Incomplete – Interpreting the Law of God (12)

Perfect, but Incomplete

Interpreting the Law of God (12)

God’s Law is perfect, but it is not yet complete.

The Law of the LORD is perfect…. Psalm 19:7

The Law of God is perfect. How do you improve on that?

Even Jesus said the Law is so perfect that not the slightest letter or mark of it will be abolished until all is fulfilled.

The Law is perfect. But it is not yet complete. Indeed, the Law will, in a certain sense, never be complete. The perfect Law achieves completion when it is applied to specific situations. No Law could ever be written for every imaginable situation (although our government is making a serious run at it!). So while the Law is perfect, it awaits completion until it is rightly applied.

And that requires interpretation. Hence, our current series.

Let’s see if I can illustrate this. The Law as it was given to ancient Israel was perfect. As we’ll see, that doesn’t mean that the Law is always to be followed only or exactly as it was originally written (more on this anon). Rather, it means that as it was originally given the Law awaited application into specific situations, when the perfect Law would come to completion in applications of love for God and neighbor.

Consider Ruth 4. Boaz sought a ruling in line with the Law of God. So he called ten elders of the city to hear his case and make a judgment. However, the Law, perfect as it was, did not have a specific statute or rule to govern the unique situation in which Boaz found himself. So it fell to the elders to understand the Law as it was given through Moses, looking for deeper and more important principles that would allow love for God and neighbor to be brought to completion in Bethlehem, and the salvation of God to be more richly enjoyed.

This is just what they did. They took statutes which seemed to have a bearing on this situation—especially Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Numbers 27:8-11—and derived from these perfect laws an application which would bring this situation of justice to completion.

The perfection of the Law is to be found in its absolute coherence with the character of God. The completion of the Law depends on its being rightly applied in situations where justice is required, and this will perforce mean deriving applications of the perfect Law which are not specifically detailed in that Law.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.