Interpreting the Law

Meredith Kline offers a suggestion to the Old Testament reader living in a New Testament era:

When interpreting laws, we must constantly reckon with the possibility that a particular stipulation of the old covenant was shaped to a greater or lesser degree by the unique intrusive nature of the holy-kingdom order that was regulated by that covenant. Since the intruded holiness of the heavenly kingdom extended to the Israelite theocratic structure as a whole, to its cultural as well as cultic dimensions, we always have the responsibility, whether dealing with laws of cultic ceremony or laws of community life, to distinguish which features of Israelite law were peculiarly theocratic (or typologically symbolic) and which are still normative in our present nontheocratic situation. In the area of institutional functions we must avoid the common fallacy of assigning to common earthly kingdoms the distinctive functions prescribed for Israel as a holy, confessional, redemptive kingdom. For example, we must not impose on the civil government the duty of punishing sins against the first four laws of the Decalogue as though they were civil offenses.(1)

(1) Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006, pg.159.