Review of The Old Testament for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ

Averbeck, Richard. The Old Testament for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2022, 382, $35.26, paperback.

Averbeck presents a very helpful resource, especially in understanding the Old Testament Law within its cultural and literary context. Stimulating at every point, the book would benefit from more extensive and systematic treatment of certain New Testament passages, especially Hebrews.

Richard Averbeck’s The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church is first and foremost a book about worship.  For Averbeck, who serves as professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the Law continues to play a vital role in leading believers on the path of holiness and acceptable worship. The church, enlivened by the Spirit, should continue to see the Law as a good gift and guide, even as believers must recognize the Law’s inherent limitation and inability to transform the heart.

In his introduction, Averbeck lays out his three theses: the Law is good, weak, and a unified whole (pp. 14-18). Averbeck divides the body of the book into three parts. The first two focus on understanding the Law in its redemptive, historical, and literary contexts, and the final considers how the New Testament authors viewed and used the Law.

Averbeck begins by defining the biblical idea of covenant and develops a paradigm by which each of the redemptive covenants (e.g., Abraham, Mosaic, Davidic, New) builds upon the prior. The Law of Moses was given in a redemptive context where obedience was seen as the appropriate response to God’s deliverance from Egypt (p. 107). The Israelites did not earn God’s favor; they obeyed and worshipped because they had already received it. The redemptive context of the Law set it apart from all other ancient Near Eastern law codes, even as the Law shares important features with other collections (pp. 91-94).

Averbeck argues the Law of Moses shows growth, development, and change over time, “due to the changing realities in which the people would be living” (p. 101). For instance, as Israel transitioned from worship in the wilderness, to the tabernacle, to the temple, God adjusted the laws regarding altars and the location of sacrifices. Thus, adjustment to the Law based on the time and circumstances of the worshipper is built into the Law itself. The Law’s purpose was to preserve the sancta and allow Israel to live in holiness as a kingdom of priests, set apart from a profane world (p. 206). Both individuals and the community had to maintain their holiness, and the food laws and purity laws existed to set Israel apart from the surrounding nations (p. 214).

In part three, Averbeck turns to the New Testament, examining the Law in the teachings of Jesus, the early church, and Paul. Jesus declared the Law would never pass away (Matt. 5:18), and Jesus fulfilled the Law, according to Averbeck, not in the sense of bringing it to an end, but by demonstrating to his followers how God intended the law to be obeyed all along (p. 233). Jesus condemned the excessive and burdensome traditions of the elders, but he did not nullify the Law itself. Because the new community of faith included Gentiles, Jesus transformed the Law to the “accommodate the needs and concerns of the new covenant community” (p. 254).

Averbeck argues the early church was no less concerned with holiness than ancient Israel, but they had to work out the ideals of holiness in the mixed setting of Jew and Gentile (p. 270). The Jerusalem Council allowed for both Jew and Gentile to worship according to their conscience, so long as the unity of the church was not disrupted (pp. 272-275). Even as a believer, Paul offered sacrifices in the temple to fulfill the Nazirite vow (Acts 21:20-26). Averbeck describes the Law of Christ as the “the way Jesus mediated the Old Testament law to us for our lives as his followers” (p. 279). The weakness of the Law, according to Averbeck, is that it doesn’t have the power to change the human heart. But believers should not assume this weakness is a defect. The Law was never intended to change the heart. The goodness of the Law is evident in Romans 7:14, where Paul even refers to the Law as spiritual (p. 284). According to Averbeck, the central concerns of the Law—love for God, love for neighbor, holiness, creation order—are all mediated to us through the law of Christ (p. 311). He summarizes, “In effect, we need to shift our thinking about this subject to the level or kind of application, not the limit or extent of application (p. 314).

The Law of Moses was given in a redemptive context where obedience was seen as the appropriate response to God’s deliverance from Egypt (p. 107). The Israelites did not earn God’s favor; they obeyed and worshipped because they had already received it. The redemptive context of the Law set it apart from all other ancient Near Eastern law codes, even as the Law shares important features with other collections (pp. 91-94).

With reference to the Old Testament, Averbeck’s presentation of the logic and setting of the Law is sophisticated and even elegant. He helps the reader understand the Old Testament on its own terms, and in doing so sheds the residue of legalism many associate with the Law. In his treatment of the New Testament, he presents a nuanced, commendable view that faith is paramount in the continued application of the law. Faith is (and has always been) the necessary for both salvation and sanctification, and the Spirit continues to use His inspired Word to conform believers to Christ. In that sense, Averbeck’s position is a robust third use of the Law with the crucial caveat that the entire Law remains useful.

One seeming gap in Averbeck’s work is a thorough examination of key New Testament passages about the Law and the Mosaic covenant. For instance, Averbeck peculiarly does not direct engage the claim in Hebrews 8:13 that the old covenant (e.g., Mosaic covenant) is obsolete and will soon pass away. Averbeck implies that Christ’s work and the Messianic age has brought about a major shift, foreshadowed if not completely analogous to the shift between tabernacle worship in the wilderness to temple worship in Jerusalem. One questions whether such a comparison does justice to the uniqueness of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as an act of new creation.

Although not one his three theses, Averbeck’s consistent claim that the Law of Christ mediates the Law of Moses is foundational to his argument. While Averbeck is no doubt correct that the law of Christ corresponds to the Law of Moses (16), it is not clear that Jeremiah 31:33 refers to the Law of Moses being written on the heart. Just as marriage was designed as a reflection of the Gospel, not vice versa, it seems very possible that the Law of Moses reflects the deeper, prior, and more fundamental law of Christ, not vice versa. One indication Jeremiah may have been referring to this deeper law is his claim in 31:34 that in the new covenant sins would be remembered no more, a situation that clearly transcends the perpetual activity of the Mosaic sacrificial system.

Overall, Averbeck presents a very helpful resource, especially in understanding the Old Testament Law within its cultural and literary context. Stimulating at every point, the book would benefit from more extensive and systematic treatment of certain New Testament passages, especially Hebrews. In the opinion of the reviewer, Averbeck’s expertise and insight into the Old Testament Law warrants its own volume, which in turn would allow him the space to engage as deeply with New Testament texts as he does with Old Testament texts. As a reminder that the Law was and is fundamentally about worship, the work will benefit student and scholar alike.