Lesson and Rule Together

Once the large arguments have been settled, a smaller and more practical question usually follows close behind them. It runs something like this: “We read the Old Testament, we learn from it, and we take its lessons to heart. But we do not accept everything in it as something we must believe and do. Is it really obedience, today, to keep the command not to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk?”

It is a fair question, and sincere people ask it. Some commandments in the Torah seem strange to a modern reader, and the goat in its mother’s milk is one that people often reach for, because it sounds so far removed from anything in an ordinary kitchen. Surely, they reason, a verse like that was written to teach us something rather than to be done.

Before answering, it is worth noticing what the question assumes. It assumes that a commandment can be either a lesson or a rule, but never both. We will carry that assumption with us through this chapter and see, at the end, whether Scripture shares it.

Which Scriptures?

A well-known verse about the usefulness of the Bible comes from Paul’s second letter to Timothy, written as he faced his death (2 Timothy 4:6):

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture) is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for paideia παιδεία pahee-di'-ah(training, discipline) in dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness); so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

The first word is “All.” Paul does not say most of Scripture, or the parts that still feel relevant. The word that follows it is graphe (γραφή), what is written. And here a simple question helps: when Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, what had been written? The New Testament had not yet been gathered into a book. The Scriptures that Timothy had known since childhood, as Paul says one verse earlier (2 Timothy 3:15), were the books we now call the Old Testament.

When Paul says “All graphe(written-scripture) is God-breathed,” then, the Torah does not stand at the edge of his sentence but at its center. Nor does he say that these writings are good only for inspiration. He calls them profitable “for teaching, for reproof, for correction,” and correction means that they can tell you when something you are doing is wrong and must change.

Then comes paideia (παιδεία), the word for the whole training and education of a child. It describes not a single lesson but the everyday shaping of a life, and its goal is practical: that the man of God be “equipped for every good work.”

Believing Everything

The claim we began with says that we do not accept everything in the Old Testament as an object of faith. Paul, on trial before the governor Felix, said the opposite about himself:

Acts 24:14 But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and that is written in the Prophets;

Paul did not pick out only the useful parts. For him, following “the Way” and believing everything written in the Torah and the Prophets were one and the same life.

Yeshua spoke in the same way. After His resurrection, as He walked with two discouraged disciples, He said to them:

Luke 24:25 And He said to them, "O foolish men and slow of kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain) to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!

Their fault was not that they believed too much of the Scriptures, but that they were slow to believe “all that the prophets have spoken.” And to the leaders who opposed Him, He drew a straight line from Moses to Himself:

John 5:46-47 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My rhema ῥήμα hray'-mah(spoken-words)?"

These words deserve a slow reading. Disbelieving the writings of Moses is not a step toward believing Yeshua. By His own account, it is the road away from Him.

The Goat Itself

Now we come to the commandment that raised the question:

Exodus 23:19 The first of the firstfruits of your ground (adamah אֲדָמָה ad-aw-maw') you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

Many guesses have been offered about the reason behind the second half of this verse, and some of them are interesting. But the commandment itself does not ask you to understand it first. It asks you not to do one thing, and the way to obey it is simply not to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

That is not a hard thing to do. Most people reading this book have never come close to breaking it. The very commandment the claim treats as a lesson rather than a rule turns out to be one of the easiest in the whole Torah to keep.

A Lesson and a Rule

This is the heart of the matter. Suppose your doctor hands you a sheet of paper that says to take one tablet every morning and to walk for thirty minutes a day. Reading it, you might learn something. You might realize that your doctor is worried about your heart and cares whether you live a long life. That is a real lesson, and a good one.

Yet no one would say, “Now that I have learned the lesson, I can stop taking the tablet.” The lesson and the tablet do not compete with each other, for the lesson is the reason you take the tablet.

Paul shows exactly how this works with another small commandment from the Torah:

1 Corinthians 9:9-10 For it is written in the nomos(law) of Moses: "You shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing." God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking entirely for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the one who plows ought to plow in elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope), and the one who threshes in elpis(hope) of partaking.

The commandment concerns an ox treading out grain (Deuteronomy 25:4). From it Paul draws a lesson: the one who works ought to share in the harvest. “For our sake it was written” is a true lesson, taught by an apostle.

What Paul does not say is just as important. He does not go on to say that the ox may now be muzzled, and he does not tell farmers that the commandment has become a picture rather than a rule. He takes the lesson from it and leaves the commandment standing. To learn from a commandment and to keep it as written are not rivals; neither pushes the other out.

Both, Not One

Yeshua said the same thing in a rebuke to the scribes and Pharisees:

Matthew 23:23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the nomos(law) — krisis κρίσις kree'-sis(judgment) and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

Many readers stop halfway through this verse. They hear “mint and dill and cummin,” then “the weightier provisions,” and they conclude that Yeshua cares about justice and mercy but not about small herbs in a garden. He did not stop there, however, and neither should we: “these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

The weightier matters do not erase the lighter ones. Yeshua told His hearers to do both, and so the great commandments and the small ones stand together.

He had said so plainly at the start of His teaching:

Matthew 5:19 Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whoever keeps and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of the heavens.

We touched on this verse in Chapter 2, and Book 1 examined it closely. Yeshua spoke these words about the Torah and the Prophets, and He did not divide the commandments into those we keep and those we merely learn from. Instead He divided people: those who break the least commandments and teach others to do the same, and those who keep the commandments and teach them. A commandment about a young goat may well be among the least, but “least” is still inside the list.

Who Decides?

The idea that some commandments are lessons only has one further problem. Someone has to decide which ones they are, and someone has to draw that line. If each reader draws it, the line will move with every reader and every century, since a commandment that feels strange in one culture feels perfectly normal in another.

Scripture never hands us that pen. It says “All graphe(written-scripture),” and Paul said that he believed “everything.”

None of this touches the way we are saved. As we saw in Chapter 1, we are justified by grace through faith in Messiah’s blood, and not by keeping any commandment, large or small. Refraining from boiling a goat in milk earns no one a place with God. The question here concerns the life that follows: the walk of people who have already been justified and are learning to do what their Father has written.

Still, another verse is often used to draw a line through the middle of the Bible. It comes from Paul’s second letter to Timothy, one chapter earlier, and it speaks of rightly dividing the word of truth. What that dividing really means is the next question.