5. The Law Covenants symbolize the nature of reality itself. We are fallen creatures and unable to natively discern how to live. We are beholden to God’s Law Covenants in the sense that they manifest how He intends we should live within our existential context. His Law Covenants explain the fundamental nature of reality itself. Living by His revelation means living consistently with how God created things, and such living elicits a positive and supportive response from Creation. It is our duty to abstract our best obedience from the context in which those Law Covenants were revealed. However, the specifics of the Law are not binding outside of its context.
Jesus taught the Law of Moses as it was intended, a body of parables and symbolic teaching aimed at provoking a mystical approach to things. Jewish legalism was foreign to the ancient Hebrew culture. All covenants in the ANE were intensely personal in nature. The Law Covenants were not law in the sense of legislation, but expressions of the divine moral character of the Heavenly Sheik who offered them. Jesus was therefore the Law in Himself, the ultimate expression of God’s self-disclosure.
The Torah was couched in terms of ANE feudalism because such feudalism is hard-wired in human nature. God’s people living together as a covenant community of faith is His glory, a family operating on ANE feudalism. No other form of religious organization qualifies for the word “church.” The feudal sheik of the ANE is nothing without his people, his true treasure. Take everything else away from him and with his covenant people he can rebuild his domain from scratch. They are his own body of life in this world. This is how God deals with us, and is how Christ rules His kingdom, His sheikdom. It is deeply personal and every individual is personally accountable, with no two individuals experiencing His fatherly love in exactly the same way.
He is always merciful in our failures, forgiving those who genuinely care what He wants from them and for them. He grants power and dominion to His servants for the purpose of carrying out their assigned roles in His domain. He trains and teaches us patiently in our feudal service of His sheikdom. His dominion, His law and revelation, are not separate from His Person. He makes us into living expressions of Himself.
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