God's Justice: The Moral Law, Civil Law, and Ceremonial (Cleanliness) Law.
Galatians 3:13 “But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Have you ever wondered why we can eat bacon but the people of Israel could not?
Many years ago I was reading the Bible and freaked out. I’ll be honest, I came across scriptures in Deuteronomy and thought. “I’m in sin! And so is my entire family.” You see I was reading in the Old Testament and found out I was not supposed to eat pork products (No bacon, ugg) or shellfish like shrimp or lobster. My family loved our shellfish being from Florida and who doesn’t love bacon. I mean really its bacon! But here I was reading about how I was not supposed to be eating it. It cause me to ask questions about God’s laws in the Old Testament and I was told we don’t follow them anymore. But the truth is we still followed some of the laws of the Old Testament like the 10 commandments so I started asking more and more questions until I was told the answer.
In the Old Testament the laws can be split into three groups: God’s moral laws, civil laws and ceremonial laws. Now each group of laws served a specific purpose
God’s Moral Law: These are God’s commands for how we should live and are binding no matter what, culture can change but the laws do not because God’s sense of right and wrong, his morals are the same past, present, and future. They can be easy to spot because God normally says he hates the act or sees it as an abomination.
God’s Civil Law: These are the legal structures and laws for Israel that dealt with the consequences of breaking the law, business practices, and the treatment of servants and slaves.
God’s Ceremonial Law: Was how the Israelites should worship and the things they needed to do to be God chosen people. It covered things like dietary restrictions and ways to combat disease.
God’s Ceremonial Law and Civil Law are not applicable to us today as believers. The Ceremonial Law helped the Israelites to be stronger and healthier than the surrounding nations and health and food practices have improved so that eating pork or shellfish do not cause the same problems (Mmmm, bacon). Christ became the sacrifice that was used in the ceremonial laws. God’s Moral Law is a different story, when God views something at sin, He doesn’t change his mind. What was sin yesterday, will be sin today, and will be sin all the way into the future. So they are still things we need to follow and obey.
The thing about the moral laws is they show us how far we have fallen and how much we need God. (Romans 3:23 We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard). So if you are struggling with one of God’s moral laws. Do not be discouraged, seek His face, allow the blood of Christ to wash away all your sins, and allow Him to give you the strength to overcome.