In recent years, it has become de rigeur to say that the stories of the Bible ought not to be read in ways that reduce the message to simple little Sunday School lessons. And of course, as with all such things, there is a sense in which this is perfectly acceptable, and in certain ways a necessary corrective. The Bible is not Aesop’s Fables, and the lessons we are to bring away from Scripture do not snap together like little legos.
But it is more than Aesop’s Fables, not less. We know this on the authority of the Lord Jesus Himself. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us an authoritative summary of the entire Old Testament. He says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matt. 7:12) — and He says that this is the law and the prophets. In Christ’s reading, the entire Old Testament reduces to an ethical charge. The Golden Rule, learned in many a Sunday School, turns out to be the whole point.
In another place, Jesus says that love for God and neighbor sum up the whole Old Testament as well (Matt. 22:40). Now if A = C and B = C, then we can say that A has something to do with B. If the two great commandments are the law and the prophets, and the Golden Rule is the law and the prophets, what is the relationship of the two great commandments and the Golden Rule? And has anybody noticed that these dominical summaries of the whole Old Testament are kind of Aesopy? Love God, love your neighbor, and do as you would be done by?
There are two significant things going on here. The first is the fact of Christ’s willingness to summarize. He doesn’t say, “Well, it’s not that simple . . .” He summarizes the entire Old Testament in words that could fit into one tweet, and room to spare. The second thing is that His summary doesn’t mention creation, sin, redemption, the Messiah, or the flow of biblio-redemptive history. I say this fully granting that all these things must be included in what we are summarizing, and that if they are not, we are going to wind up with some sort of anemic and very liberal “brotherhood of man, fatherhood of God” bromide collection. Moralism as a stand-alone product really is heretical and bad. But it is apparently not bad to sound moralistic sometimes, like when you are summarizing the import of the Old Testament.
And as they say on tv infomercials, “But wait, there’s more.” This information is not just given to us raw, but in more than one instance we are given a ranking of competing summaries.
“And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:32-34a).
Not only does this scribe summarize the Old Testament the same way Jesus had done, he goes farther and says that this element of biblical teaching is far to be preferred to religious ceremonial, even when the ceremonies in questions had been established by God. When he says this, Jesus commends him and says that he is not far from the kingdom.
The dogmatism of the Pharisees was not detached from their covenantal boundary markers. We have all had to deal with the theological Euclidians, who can slice metaphysical hairs with precision, and when they are done, nobody can tell any difference. They can take the midges of truth, dissect them, and tie off the intestines of those midges into a little braid, and all while the rest of us don’t even know yet whether or not midges even have intestines. I mean, think about it.
But the airy fairy metaphysicians are not a big factor in the biblical text. We have to deal with them, sure enough, reasoning by analogy. But the Pharisees were hair-splitters when it came to ritual, ceremony, practice. When do you wash your hands and feet, and why? What may you eat, and why? When may you eat it? What constitutes sabbath observance? You may pick up a chair and carry it across the room on the sabbath, but you may not drag it — for if you drag it, it might break the surface, and that would be plowing, and plowing is working on the sabbath.
And then a man, not far from the kingdom, said that a monotheistic confession, and loving that God all out, and loving your neighbor as yourself was “more” than “all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
There is a temptation for those Christians who want to emphasize ritual (in the wrong way) to say that in the new covenant things are all different, because of the way Christ is present in His worship now. But this overlooks several things. First, Christ has always been present with His people. The Rock that accompanied Israel was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), and the people then drank spiritual drink and ate spiritual food.
The second point unfolds from the first. We are not permitted to draw contrasts where the New Testament draws parallels. The Corinthians were tempted to put on airs over against the Jews. We have spiritual food. We have spiritual drink. So did the Jews, Paul replies bluntly. You can have religious ceremonial, God-given ritual, whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, baptism in the cloud and sea, and still be overthrown in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:5). You can have a degree in liturgics and still not have the one thing needful (Heb. 4:2). Not only is it possible to do this, it is easy to do this. The human soul likes making this mistake. And why do I talk this way? Because the Bible does, over and over again. It is never rude to speak biblically.
So if we look at this carefully, we see that the Golden Rule is another way of expressing the duties of love. Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). This is how He does that — by giving a heart of love, by giving the kind of heart that understands the Golden Rule.
He gives the new heart. He converts the soul. He opens our eyes. He makes light shine out of darkness. He pours out the spirit of regeneration. He gives us true evangelical faith, the only catalyst that can make any religious activity whatever acceptable in the sight of God (Heb. 4:3).
Apart from the new birth, God hates whatever it is we think we are doing. Away with the noise of your songs! High church, low church, stand-on-the-yellow-line church, God spews it out of His mouth.