The End of The Law

During this past week our provincial government stopped issuing public health orders after a constant stream of legislation over the last two years. The final public health order which came into effect a few days ago is very simple and states only that existing orders under the Public Health Act are terminated.

To some people this is wonderful news they have been waiting for since the first order was issued in March of 2020. They might say that rules controlling the spread of an illness have been restrictive and over-reaching or poorly implemented and it's high time for them to go. To others this is bad news they have been dreading. They might say that rules controlling the spread of this illness were put in place because people demonstrated inability to control their own actions and the risk of the illness is as great now as it has been in the recent past so this is no time to slack off on our group effort to control it. So, just as the first public health orders were greeted with some dread and some relief, the end of public health legislation also comes with a mix of dread and relief.

But whether the end of the law comes with rejoicing or despair, it does come. After two years of embracing the legislation, or defying it, or shrugging our shoulders and getting on with it, there is suddenly nothing to embrace, defy, or get on with. We are left to our own devices to figure out how to manage this health risk in our personal, work, social, and public lives. When we disagree we can no longer get out of that disagreement by shrugging and deferring to a law that we might not like but are all subject to. Some businesses had their mask mandate signs down by the end of the day on Monday and there has not been a mask anywhere in sight since then and in other businesses all the staff and customers remain masked. Some teachers moved their students' tables and chairs back into groups for the start of class on Tuesday and others plan to keep up social distancing for the foreseeable future. Some people threw their last mask out the window on Monday and plan to not ever wear one again and others are stocking up. In all cases the responsibility for that decision falls on the person or organization who made it and no longer on some government official whom nobody we know has ever met.

This should be familiar to the church because the first generation of the church fumbled with exactly this situation as people who had grown up under Jewish law listened to the apostle Paul and others preach about the end of that law and newfound freedom in Christ. Some rejoiced in that newfound freedom and pushed its limits to excess and disregard for those around them, engaging in all sorts of behaviour that had been prohibited under Jewish law just because they could. For these people any boundary was a bad boundary and being free meant doing whatever you wanted regardless of the consequences. Others reacted against their newfound freedom and became in some ways more conservative and legalistic as Christians than they had been before. For these people external boundaries are a necessary starting point and if the old ones from the Jewish law no longer applied then they needed to enact new ones for the Christian community so that everyone would have their proper role defined for them. Each of these two groups pushed against the other and in some ways justified their own excess by pointing to the opposite excess of the other side. The boundary lovers pointed to the sexual excess and bad food handling practices of the liberty lovers. The liberty lovers pointed to the obsessive rituals and ascetic practices of the boundary lovers. They were in danger of breaking apart as a Christian community and each group dissolving in their own misapplication of their new freedom.

Paul and other letter writers to the early church push against this urge to break apart in freedom. They emphasize that freedom in Christ is not freedom to disregard those around you but the freedom to see those around you in new ways. Freedom from Jewish law does not mean freedom from relationship with others, it means freedom to be in relationship with others including complicated efforts to guard, manage, and cultivate those relationships with healthy boundaries. Freedom from traditional law does not mean the end of expectations, it means a constant new expectation to work out the details as we go. The end of the law does not mean direct access to the fullness of God, it means a much greater and wider conversation between people about how God may be present in our lives.

The last verse of the book of Judges in the Old Testament says that the word of the Lord was rare in those days and each one did what was right in his own eyes. New Testament writers are emphatic that the end of the requirements of the Jewish law for Christian believers is much different than the situation in the book of Judges. Far from each one doing what was right in his own eyes, the end of the old law means that space is made for a new law, the law of love in the presence of Jesus, which serves as a guide for newfound freedom. The end of the old law does not mean the freedom to do whatever you like regardless of the consequences; it means the freedom to work together with those others to make things better for everybody involved. The end of the old law does not mean no more expectations; it means that the people involved get to (and need to) work out their expectations with one another. The end of the old law does not mean the freedom to cause offence or insult; it means an obligation to stay in relationship with the ones you are most likely to insult or offend, and to treat each other compassionately. The end of the old law does not mean freedom from God; it means freedom toward God. These were difficult teachings for the early church and we read examples on both the liberty loving side and the boundary loving side of people who were exasperated or frustrated by how complex and difficult it was to work out the details of their newfound freedom in Christ. As we have learned in the last couple of years, having a law imposed on you from outside is frustrating but it's also clarifying. Sometimes people who disagreed with public health orders from opposite points of view could find common ground in their frustration with the provincial government. They could set aside the fact that one of them wished the rules went less far and the other wished they went farther, and they could come together in generalized frustration with the “dumb rules.”

Rules imposed by others bind people together even if (maybe especially if) those people disagree with the rules. When the rules fall away we are left only with the power of our own convictions and our willingness to form and maintain relationships. That's the freedom that Paul and other biblical writers speak of when they talk about freedom in Christ. It's a powerful and sometimes terrifying freedom to go past the end of imposed law and to make our way together with those around us. For that reason we have the new law – the law of love in Christ – that keeps our freedom from destroying itself and guides our freedom towards benefit rather than harm and towards relationship rather than isolation.