Sunday School: WCF 19.1-19.4 — The Three Kinds of Law and the Principle of General Equity

Is the Old Testament law just done away with, or is there more going on when Scripture calls something "abrogated"? This week we open Westminster Confession Chapter 19 and work through how God's people, saved by grace, are meant to rightly understand and use God's law. We trace the law back before Sinai to the garden itself, where Adam was given a covenant of works with life promised for obedience, and walk through the three categories Scripture gives us: moral law (binding on everyone, everywhere, always, summarized in the Ten Commandments and in loving God and neighbor), ceremonial law (fulfilled, not discarded, in Christ), and civil law (specific to Israel as a nation-state, yet still carrying lasting principle). That lasting principle is what the Confession calls "general equity," and we spend the second half of class putting it into practice, working through Old Testament commands that sound strange on the surface, a parapet on a roof, leaving the edges of a field for the poor, not muzzling an ox, not boiling a kid in its mother's milk, and asking what unchanging principle each one still teaches us today. Scripture referenced: Genesis 2:16-17, Matthew 22:37-40, Hebrews 10:1, Deuteronomy 4:6, Deuteronomy 22:8, Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 24:6, Deuteronomy 22:10, Romans 2, Psalm 119 Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church. Subscribe for weekly teaching, verse-by-verse Bible study, and Reformed theology applied to everyday life.