The clearest one is the woman who was caught in adultery. It is commandment of the Law of Moses, to see that she and her co-perpetrator were stoned. Christ the Lord furthered something entirely different.
There was a regulation that
both the man and the woman that were committing adultery were to be stoned.
Lev 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
But that is not the same as saying that it was the responsibility
of Jesus, who did not have any first party knowledge of the situation, to carry out the punishment. Any accusations leading to capital punishment would have to be checked for accuracy. In this case, we have only the word of those trying to trap Jesus, though it is true that accusations were to be accepted on the basis of the witness of two or three individuals. The idea being that any false witness themselves would eventually be found out and put to death. Regardless, although Jesus as God knew the truth of the situation, I assert that God would not expect any of His followers to rashly start stoning to death anyone that they were not sure to be guilty. And thus Jesus as man shouldn't being throwing stones at anyone based on corrupt accusations.
I assert that it would’ve been the responsibility of those who caught them. So in this situation, the accusing leaders were the guilty ones because they were not carrying out the execution and they were also guilty by not bringing in the man. I suspect that the man was party to their little trap that they were setting up, and thus one of their own.
Notice also that Jesus did
not say, "Yeah, all those rules given long ago under the leadership of Moses and the Great I AM, well those were actually a bad idea, so I (Jesus -- also the Great I AM) am going to just ignore those." The value of putting a death penalty for the bad practice of adultery was
not so that God could kill as many people as possible. But rather to prevent it from happening in the first place. As in the text below, which was speaking about stoning those inducing others to idolatry:
Deut 13:11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
Why does God care about sexual acts between adults? Today most would say that what happens behind closed doors is no one else's business. God is not harmed in these situations, so what difference is it to Him? He cares because of how it affects His children. Consider the story of David and his adultery with Bathsheba and how that turned out. Not only did David end up murdering Uriah, Bathsheba's wife, but he then later failed to take action when his son, Amnon, raped his half-sister Tamar -- ultimately leading to Absalom's rebellion and civil war in Israel.
So the rule to drive out adultery was a good rule -- although any death penalty is ultimately heartbreaking. But notice that even in the OT, when God sent Nathan the prophet to confront David, He did not order David to be put to death.
Back to the situation of the woman. The position that the people were trying to put Jesus into was
completely unfair. They were equally or even more guilty than the adulterous woman, and their goal was NOT to bring in right-doing into the community. Instead, it was to trap the innocent Jesus himself -- who was there trying to save them from the very evil they were demonstrating. They wanted to bring Jesus into conflict with Roman rule prohibiting such practice. They were twisting a guidance intended for good into one intended for evil.
So how did Jesus escape this trap? Did He assert His authority as the Son of God to negate the rule? No, He said that "the one that was not himself also guilty to start the whole process." Jesus then simply wrote their sins in the dust, and being filled with guilt, they fled the scene. After everyone was gone, were there two or three witnesses testifying against the woman's guilt? No.
Loophole escape complete! With no witnesses, there was no legal basis for stoning. And Jesus was then able to encourage the woman to put this sinful act behind her and become the woman God wanted her to be.
He avoided violating the letter of the Mosaic law, avoided conflict with the Roman civil law, chastised the hypocrisy of the leaders, and filled a sinful woman's heart with love for the one who saved her. It was as
wonderful a trap escape as the one about taxes and coins being returned to Caesar. Amazing!
The Mosaic Laws, all of them, over and over and over again, are written as being between God and the descendants of the man named Jacob and then renamed Israel. They did not and do not apply to Christ the Lord, and His adopted brothers and sisters, because our only father of His record, becomes God.
The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in all matters as we were, but was without sin. It would seem unfair to me to say that Jesus didn’t have to follow the rules. In that case,
there is no definition of sin, because whatever He does is automatically alright. To think this way would be to say that He could have killed his parents and it still would’ve been OK because He was the son of God. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Another large set of Laws of Moses which Christ the Lord neither followed nor encouraged, were the laws of purity. Rather, He said: ...
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. John 15:3
Jesus told his disciples that he had purified them (i.e. He had purified their hearts) through the words He gave them. That is not the same thing as saying that He did not himself follow the purity laws from Moses. Can you give an example of a purity law that he did not follow?
Many protestants, quoting the words of Paul, feel that the purity laws of the Old Testament no longer apply to the modern day Christian. Stating the reason for this to be that Jesus changed the way God was working with his followers. That, in my opinion, is a
separate issue from what you are discussing here, which is whether Jesus himself was in the new program or the old program.
I think most Christians would state that Jesus fulfilled the law by
living a sinless life.
Best wishes,
Kevin
UPDATE: Reading back over this, I recall that he touched lepers where were unclean. But in touching them, they were suddenly no longer lepers -- so that may be another loophole He used for good.
