Class 4 – Jesus Christ and the Law of Moses

What is the law of Moses? Dr. Joshua Sears wrote, “The law of Moses is a collective term we use for the commandments, ordinances, and teachings that were taught and practiced among the people of ancient Israel. The Old Testament texts containing the law of Moses do not make it clear that this iteration of divine law would ever end—that is why the New Testament reports that, after the death of Jesus Christ, even Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah had a difficult time understanding that the law was fulfilled or what exactly changed with Jesus’s death. Although we use the collective term “law of Moses” to refer to the Old Testament’s legal material, the reality is that those texts present doctrinal ideas differently and contain numerous differences (even contradictions) in their presentation of how Israelites should live.  To use a modern analogy, it would be like reading the General Handbook and discovering that in one section it describes three-hour church services while in another section it assumes that Sunday meetings only last for two hours. Each section would reflect a policy from different times in Church history. It shouldn’t surprise us that the law of Moses would have to adapt over the centuries—just think of how much we’ve had to learn and adapt in just the two centuries since Joseph Smith.”