A new reformation?

This year marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Reformation, a movement that saw nearly an entire continent transformed and millions of people gain access to the Word of God for the first time. 

Fast forward to now, the transformational effects of this reformation seem to have waned. Our society is in distress, our relationships are broken, the Church is polarized over any number of issues, and Christians struggle to have positive impact on public policy and debate. 

We need another reformation, but of what sort? We have the worship movements, the prayer movements, the missions movements, but still we see society going in the opposite direction of God’s commands. So what’s missing? 

One of the greatest revivals recorded in the Bible took place under the reign of King Josiah. It is written of him, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25). 

Josiah places among the last in a long line of kings of Israel and Judah, most of whom did evil in the eyes of the Lord. But even at a young age, he had a heart after God and took steps to repair the temple. At one point, the high priest finds the Book of the Law (known to us as the Mosaic Law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) underneath a pile of rubble and brings it to the king. Upon hearing the Book of the Law read aloud, Josiah tears his robes because he realizes how far away God’s people have strayed. He then inquires of the Lord - who in turn was pleased with his responsiveness and humility (2 Kings 22:29); he gathers the community together - the elders, the priests and prophets, and “all the people from the least to the greatest” (23:1-2); he has the Book of the Law read aloud to the people; and finally, he renews the covenant in the presence of the Lord, essentially instigating a societal transformation (23:3). 

The parallels between this story and our present day are really quite striking. Our temple (both physical body and church) is in disrepair. Many popular pastors and teachers don’t preach from the Old Testament apart from Psalms and Proverbs, and very few broach the subject of Mosaic Law. Instead we focus on the life and teachings of Jesus, forgetting that Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it.

This begs the question, what is it about the Law that was so important to God and to Jesus? And how far have we strayed?

The Mosaic Law is commonly summarized in the Ten Commandments and was even more succinctly interpreted by Jesus as the following: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31). 

In essence, the Law was given to guide people into right relationship with their God and right relationship with their neighbor. The intention was for God’s chosen people Israel to be set apart, holy, different from the rest. That is still God’s intention for his people. Since we gentiles have been grafted in, it’s his intention for us to be set apart, holy, different from the rest. Which we believe and preach in theory, but are we really that different in practice? 

Let’s look at capitalism. Our entire system is built on debt and interest. Yet this goes directly against God’s framework in Deuteronomy: “Do not charge your brother interest…” (23:19-20), and “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts…” (15:1-4). How far have we who call ourselves Christians gone to question these mechanisms in our economic system? How many of us are drowning in debt? How many of us play the stock market and invest in funds that we really don’t know that much about? We trust financial planners to invest our money, but do we do the research to find out whether or not our money is funding industries that honor God’s principles? 

Let’s look at work ethic. The Sabbath (day of rest) was of utmost importance to the Lord. Yet how many of us struggle to find work-life balance? How many of us consistently work late, or on the weekends and during times when we should be prioritizing family and other relationships? How many of us make career decisions based on salary and upward mobility rather than on what’s best for the marriage, the kids or the extended family? 

Let’s talk about the criminal justice system. Most of us would agree that criminals should pay for their crime and serve time in jail. But how aware are we of the fact that prison didn’t exist in Hebrew culture? Offenders didn’t get removed from society like they do today. Instead, the offender and the community had to live with one another, forcing them to find the means to restore what had been broken and seek forgiveness from and restitution for the people who had been hurt. This is relational justice, and God is not anything if not relational. Criminal justice should seek the wellbeing of the victim, the offender and society as whole, but this rarely happens. How often do we as Christians question the destructive and non-relational dynamics of our prison system? 

By largely discounting the Mosaic Law as no longer applicable since we are now ‘under grace’, we’ve essentially neglected God’s commands and left them under our own pile of rubble.

The first reformation brought people out of spiritual darkness. Today we need a reformation that will bring us out of relational dysfunction. Let us follow the example of Josiah, the king who turned to the Lord “with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.” Let us seek the Father’s heart behind the seemingly harsh and culturally irrelevant rules of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Let the Book of the Law be read aloud again and let us renew our covenant with the God who loves us, who has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future (Jer. 29:11).