The choice between life and death laid before the people in Deuteronomy 30:15-20 was determined by whether or not the people would choose to trust and obey the Word of God. Obedience to the Law of God was an expression of trust in God which revealed who really were His people. The obedience demanded by the Law could not be satisfied by legalistic observance of external commands, like circumcision, but by an internal love-response to God. The essence of the Law was love for God (Deut 6:5; 10:12) and for fellow-beings (Lev 19:18). Life was understood as a gift to be accepted by a faith response to God. As Gerhard von Rad puts it, Only by faith, that is, by cleaving to the God of salvation, will the righteous have life (cf. Hab 2:4; Am 5:4, 14; Jer 38:20). It is obvious that life is here understood as a gift. It was only after his conversion that Paul understood that the Old Testament view of the function of the Law was a faith-response to the gift of life and salvation and not a means to gain life through legalistic obedience. Prior to his conversion, as we see, Paul held to the Pharisaic view of the Law as a means of salvation, a kind of mediator between God and man. After his encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road, Paul was compelled to reexamine his theology. Gradually, he came to realize that his Pharisaic view of the Law as a way of salvation was wrong because the Old Testament teaches that salvation was promised already to Abraham through the Christ, the Seed to come, 430 years before the giving of the Law at Sinai (Gal 3:17).
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:50:33 +0000
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