For The Baconator … Concerning the Ceremonial Law

Post Resurrection Christians do not believe that Christians follow all 613 of the OT Laws. Many of those Laws have been fulfilled (not abrogated) in Christ.

Among many Christians the one undivided law is broken down into three subcategories. These are, “Moral,” “Judicial,” and “Ceremonial.” The “Ceremonial law are those OT laws that prefigured the death of Christ, These laws we are not responsible to keep now because Christ has kept and fulfilled all that those laws anticipated in and by His death. In other words, because of the Lord Christ’s death the Ceremonial laws are past since they are completed in Christ since their purpose was to point to Christ.

As such we definitely still do not do animal sacrifices. Animal sacrifices were part of the ceremonial law that pointed to Christ. Christ has come and died the death they were shadowing and so there will never be a need for these sacrifices again.

In the same way matters like the prohibition of mixing seed, the prohibition of mixing cloths, and the prohibition of mixing plowing animals, also are understood as Ceremonial laws that are now past since the purpose of those laws were to teach the necessity for God’s people in the Old Testament to remain unmixed from the pagan gentile nations around them. As Christ has come, and with His death, has now broken down the spiritual dividing wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14 forward) those mixing laws are now fulfilled and so are not required of the Christian. Christ has now brought the Gentile nations into the community of the Christian faith upon Faith in Christ, and so those laws lose their ongoing validity, though the general principle of those laws remain as contained in the idea of being separated unto God (II Cor. 6:14-7:1). So, the forbidding of mixing clothes as part of God’s law in the OT is fulfilled in Christ. In Christ the nations have come in and so there is no longer the necessity of an Old Testament obedience that communicated that the Non Israeli Nations were unclean.

Some would argue that the OT dietary laws are also void since the Lord Christ said,

Mt. 15:11 — “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

As that is combined with Acts 10 and the vision where God tells Peter to eat heretofore unclean animals as symbology for Peter to go to the Cornelius the Centurion many Christians come to the conclusion that the OT Dietary laws are void. However, many solid Christians will hold that these dietary laws still do apply.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

4 thoughts on “For The Baconator … Concerning the Ceremonial Law”

  1. Keil and Delitsch On Leviticus 19:19:

    “[Here is a] series of commandments, which make it a duty on the part of the people of God to keep the physical and moral order of the world sacred. This series began in v. 19 with the commandment not to mix the things which are separated in the creation of God… By these laws the observance of the natural order and separation of things is made a duty binding upon the Israelites, the people of Jehovah, as a divine ordinance founded in creation itself (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). All the symbolical, mystical, moral, and utilitarian reasons that have been supposed to lie at the foundation of these commands, are foreign to the spirit of the law.”

  2. It’s easy to miss the fact that in the Matthew 15 passage, our Lord was not talking about foods or dietary laws. He was addressing the eating of any food with unwashed hands, which was what had the Pharisees’ knickers in a knot.

    1. Principle would remain the same though. Not washing hands, in the context of eating, can not make one unclean because it is not what goes into the mouth that makes one unclean. Just so, that which is likewise considered unclean in itself can not make one unclean because it is not what goes into the mouth that makes one unclean. I do think Matthew 15 applies here.

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