Teaching Upon the Law

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The reinforcement of the moral precepts of the Law made Jesus many friends, especially among the simple, God-fearing people. But it also made Him many and perhaps more enemies amongst those who, like the Pharisee of the parable, thought themselves God-fearing people.

The Book of the Saviour, Volume Two: The Proclamation of the Kingdom, assembled by F.J. Sheed (Cluny Media, 222 pages)

Central in Our Blessed Lord’s teaching, because central in the political and religious life of the little people whom He taught, was the question of the Law. It was the unique achievement of this little God-guided people that no other pre-Christian people, small or great, had explicitly and minutely based, as they had based, their social code on an ethical code. Not even Greece, of the golden age of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, had attempted what the Jews before them had attempted and achieved. Indeed, far from seeking to measure the State by an immovable or absolute ethical code, these Greek thinkers were bewildered into finding the ethical absolute in the State itself. For the Greeks, with their merely notional acceptance of God and their very definite patriotic acceptance of Greece, the good man was the good citizen. On the other hand, for the Jew, with his concept of God clearer than even his clear patriotic concept of his nation, the good man, being God’s man, would necessarily be the good citizen.

The Jewish law consisted of general precepts and of particular precepts.

The general precepts were a fundamental ethical code. They were called the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. By later writers they are called the Moral Precepts.

This fundamental ethical code of moral precepts contained only the general, as distinct from the particular, duties of man to God, and of man to his fellow-men. To these general moral precepts were added particular precepts: (1) The ceremonial precepts dealing with man’s duties to God; and (2) The social or judicial precepts, dealing with man’s duties to his fellow-men.

We need not remark that the fundamental ethical code was unchangeable. But the ceremonial precepts, which were preparatory for the coming of the Messiah, were unchangeable only until He came. His coming would necessarily make their continuance an untruth.

Again, the social precepts, which were laws made for the civic life of the Jewish people, and therefore not adapted to every people, had neither the essential continuance of the moral precepts, nor the essential discontinuance of the ceremonial precepts, but might or might not be continued according to the will of a people.

As there was no direct effect of Our Blessed Lord’s action that was not part of His plan, we now know that He was minded (1) to support the ethical precepts of the Law; (2) to abolish the (preparatory) ceremonial precepts of the Law; and (3) to leave untouched the social precepts of the Law.

Perhaps we have not yet recognized how Our Blessed Redeemer’s support of the precepts of the Natural Law mark Him off from the few men whom many of their fellow-men look on as religious leaders. Men as strong-minded as Muhammad did not feel themselves strong enough to impose sexual ethics beyond the average of their contemporaries. On the other hand, Jesus found a level of morality which it would have been easy enough, and worldly-prudent enough, not to follow. For example, though there had been no legal repeal of the precept “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” there was such a widespread practical repeal that the legal machinery for punishing adultery by stoning the adulteress had long since ceased to function.

Lesser moralists, such as the world has often seen, would have acted on the principle: “The precept has been universally denied in practice. Let us avoid hypocrisy—let us deny it in principle.” Our Blessed Lord’s avoidance of this wonted way of popularity for religious reformers argues a wisdom beyond that of the worldly-wise.

This reinforcement of the moral precepts of the Law made Him many friends, especially among the simple, God-fearing people. But it also made Him many and perhaps more enemies amongst those who, like the Pharisee of the parable, thought themselves God-fearing people. If not all of them felt the lash of His denunciation of fornication and adultery, they could not help feeling scourged with thongs of truth when He spoke of honouring father and mother, and pilloried those whose tithing of mint and cumin was a breach of “Thou shalt not steal.”

But if Our Blessed Lord’s reinforcement of the moral precepts of the Law recruited His enemies heavily from the wicked, His abrogation of the ceremonial precepts made many enemies even of the good. These good men could see only as Sabbatarians. Their Sabbath, with its elaborate ritual, was such a national, religious, historic, artistic social synthesis and symbol that any change in it was worse than sedition. Indeed, because whoever ventured to change an institution as divine as the Sabbath claimed to be divine, it seemed to follow that Jesus, by claiming authority over the Sabbath, was implicitly claiming to be equal to God. No wonder there is a note of understanding, if not sympathy, in Our Lord’s words to His apostles: “The hour cometh when whosoever killeth you will think he offereth a sacrifice to God.”

These good folk, with headlong zeal for the Sabbath, did not take time to realize that it was not the substance but the passing accompaniments of the ceremonial law which Jesus was minded to abrogate. It was not sacrifice, but the lesser sacrifices of living and lifeless beings, He was abrogating. Indeed, He was preparing to fulfil and perfect all local sacrifices by the unique self-sacrifice of the Cross. So little of what was permanent was ended that His Apostles have transmitted to all time the weekly sacrifice, and have laid upon their followers the duty of assisting at that weekly sacrifice under pain of grievous sin. It is even arguable that if the Catholic obligation of presence at the weekly sacrifice were to fail, the very notion of man’s individual and collective duty of sacrifice to God would perish in the world. It was not then the substance, but some of the ceremonial accompaniments of sacrifice that were set aside when Jesus showed Himself Master of the Sabbath. But, as preparations for the king’s coming are set aside when the king has come, so were the elaborate legal ceremonies preparatory to the coming of the Messiah set aside when Jesus, the Messiah, had come.

If we have ventured to suggest that Our Blessed Lord’s attitude to the moral precepts and the ceremonial precepts of the Law argued, or at least evidenced, a more than human wisdom, that wisdom is corroborated by His attitude towards the social precepts of the Law. Circumstances which would have led any other reformer into political action for the good of his religious reform left Jesus untouched. The occupation of a religious reformer’s country by a foreign nation is an opportunity for giving his reform the cutting-edge of patriotism. Even nowadays moral reformers commonly denounce the immorality of their country as a foreign import. The Roman occupation of Palestine gave Our Blessed Lord an unique opportunity of enlisting the whole force of Jewish patriotism on the side of His religious mission. What that patriotism was capable of could be measured by the battlings and victories of the Maccabees. Even as He went from hamlet to hamlet a group of His fellow-Galileans—perhaps after hearing His words—had made an appeal to the sword and had soon experienced the terrible Roman wrath, the ruthless guardian of the Roman peace.

Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

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The featured image is “Christ healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesdain” (between 1667 and 1670) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.