Study Course Lesson 1 – 2
The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Practically every page of the Old Testament is full of commandments regulating all sorts of topics,
from the famous Ten Commandments to apparently racist prohibitions about intermarrying with
Canaanites to obscure, ritualistic laws about not plowing with oxen and donkeys together.
The entire Christian world sees these as a jumble of disconnected rules from a bygone dispensation.
But ask yourself: “Why would God waste three-quarters of the Bible with a bunch of boring laws,
genealogies, and stories?”
Obviously, He wouldn’t. So those things are not a waste of time – there must have been a REASON
God said all these things! So even if there were no point in KEEPING them, there IS a point in
UNDERSTANDING them!
What did Paul say in 2 Timothy 3:15-16? ALL those laws, examples, and judgments are profitable for
us! Timothy didn’t have the benefit of the New Testament (NT), because when Paul said this, the NT
was mostly unwritten! The only “holy scriptures” he could have known from a youth was the Old
Testament (OT)!
The Christian world today mostly ignores these old laws – and I’m not saying we should keep them!
But PAUL told Timothy that they were all “PROFITABLE for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness”!
So we are going to apply the method you learned in the previous lesson, and merge and harmonize
these Old Covenant (henceforth abbreviated OC) laws, and see if they can be assembled into a picture
that means something for us today!
Once we’ve done that, in future lessons we will study the New Covenant (NC), and see how it changed
and abolished things in the OC. Let’s start with an example from Deuteronomy 25:4. How can that
possibly be profitable for us today?
They would pile their grain on a hard surface and drive the cows back and forth over it to separate the
edible kernel from the useless chaff – how is that useful to us? We buy our bread in the supermarket
and don’t even OWN a cow! Paul answers in 1 Corinthians 9:9-11.
Paul said this obscure and unimportant law of Moses was written for OUR sake! For the instruction
and education of New Covenant Gentiles! Why? What did the separation of wheat from chaff
symbolize? Luke 3:16-17.
See how we never have to guess at the Bible’s symbolism! If the Bible gives a symbol in one place, it
ALWAYS gives an explanation in another place – but only if you take the time to MERGE and
HARMONIZE the scriptures!
Separating wheat from chaff, in the Bible’s symbolism, represents the separation of the saints from the
wicked – something Jesus came to do, and which the apostles and later all the church were taking part
in (1 Corinthians 3:5-8, Ezekiel 44:23).
Based on that OC law not to muzzle a working ox, Paul concluded that those who helped to separate
the wheat from the chaff should be allowed to eat some of the wheat – in other words, that those who
preach the gospel have a right to receive a living from those who learn the truth from them
(1 Corinthians 9:14).
Notice how he looked at the IDEA behind the law – the fundamental principle it taught. An ox
separating wheat from chaff deserves a bit of the wheat. Then he extrapolated that idea, and concluded
that anyone who separated good from bad deserved to receive some of the good!
Then he applied that principle to a situation that was completely different on the surface – but which
he recognized had the same elements – someone helping to separate good from evil in the church
deserved to be fed by the good!
But when you understand the core idea of a law, you can apply it to any similar situation! For example,
a chef who peels vegetables in a kitchen is entitled to eat some of the food he prepares; a dog who
retrieves ducks for a hunter deserves to keep one from time to time; the guy who keeps the pool clean
should be allowed to swim in it!
Every one of these examples has the same heart; a person who separates good from bad, deserves to
use some of the good. I’ve spent a lot of time on this idea because this is one of the biggest keys to
understanding the Bible!
We just saw Paul merge one obscure OT commandment with a NT principle. We took that principle,
and applied it to a handful of other situations. But now you need to think about this question: what if
we could do that with EVERY law, every example, and every word in the Bible?
And what if, when we found the idea behind every commandment, we found a simple principle that
could be summed up in a single phrase? Remember, we never have to answer questions like this!
That’s why you have a Bible! It answers these questions for us! Matthew 7:12.
SUM OF THE LAW
That is a SINGLE principle – “do to others as you want them to do to you” (we’ll be using this a lot,
so we’ll abbreviate it “do unto others” from now on). Jesus said this short phrase represented the
sum of all the laws in the Bible! In other words, if you were to merge every law together you would
eventually come up with that simple commandment!
That means the idea we just studied, “thou shalt not muzzle your ox” is contained in “do unto others”.
Does that make sense? How can that very specific commandment be contained in another
commandment which doesn’t even mention oxen? Because the IDEA behind it is contained in the
IDEA behind the greater law!
See for yourself! Treat your cow as you would want to be treated! If you were chopping strawberries
all day, wouldn’t you eat one yourself now and then? Would you like it if your employer “muzzled”
you, and forbade you from taking any? I know that I wouldn’t! So if I wouldn’t like it to be done to me
it would be wrong for me to muzzle someone else!
Does that mean it would be alright for me to eat half the strawberries I process? Of course not!
Because then I would not be treating my employer the way I would want to be treated! If you were
employing someone to chop strawberries, you wouldn’t mind if they ate 1 out of 50; but what if they
ate 1 out of 5? I bet you wouldn’t like it! So if you wouldn’t like it, you shouldn’t do it – that’s the
law!
This means if you had really understood the greatest commandment, “do unto others”, God would not
have needed to give you a specific commandment to treat your ox as you would want to be treated!
Because if you obeyed the great commandment, you would already be treating your ox as you
would want to be treated!
In other words, the sub-commandment is redundant if you TRULY understand the greater
commandment!
DO UNTO GOD…
But does this law only apply to how you treat other physical creatures – animals and people? Or does it
also apply to how you treat God? In other words, should you treat God as you would want to be treated
if you were Him?
Think about it! Try to imagine that you were God, and you saved someone’s life. Then that person
gave the credit to some other god. Would you like that? No! If I saved someone from drowning, would
I like it if they thanked someone else instead? Of course not!
So when God freed Israel from slavery, and they turned their backs on Him and worshiped some other
god who had never done anything for them… of COURSE He felt betrayed and angry! How would
YOU feel? Would you want to be treated that way? No? Then you shouldn’t treat God that way!
So if you REALLY understood “do unto others”, you would never worship another god! And therefore,
God would not have needed to give you a specific commandment “thou shalt have no other gods
before me”! Once again the lesser commandment is CONTAINED in the greater commandment!
Put slightly differently, should we steal from God? Does He like that? Malachi 3:8. Does God like it
when people commit adultery with His wife? Ezekiel 23:36-37. Does God want us to honor Him, as
we would our father? Jeremiah 3:4-5, 19. Does He like it when we try to kill Him? Matthew 26:24,
Hebrews 6:6.
Just from these few examples, we can see that the same things we would not want done to us, God
doesn’t want done to Him! So if we truly love God as we love ourselves, we would not do them to
Him! Naturally, since God is not living with us in a physical sense, these laws don’t always apply in
the exact same way. But if we find the IDEA, the PRINCIPLE behind the law, there is no real
difference!
If we don’t pay tithes, we are stealing from God. He plainly said so. True, we cannot sneak into heaven
and steal the golden candlestick out of His house… but by not giving Him what we owe, we are stealing
from Him! Just as surely as if we, the wheat, refused to give His oxen some of our food when they
separated us from the chaff!
TWO GREAT LAWS
The highest law is “do unto others”. But if that law is a result of merging all other laws, as Jesus said it
was, then it must contain all other laws with in it! So if you look at “do unto others” under a
microscope, you would see “do unto God” and “do unto Men” contained within it! When Jesus was
asked what the most important law of all was, what did He say? Matthew 22:36-40.
There, instead of a single law – “do unto others”, Jesus gave TWO laws – one of which was greater
than the other. We can abbreviate them “Love God”, and “Love Men”. So now the single law has split
into two parts! These could also be paraphrased as “Do unto God”, and “Do unto men”. These are the
greatest TWO commandments! And Jesus reiterates that upon these twin commandments rest the
entire Bible!
But did Jesus say only the laws could be summed up in that phrase? What EXACTLY did He say?
Matthew 7:12. In the time of Jesus, the OT was not called that. The NT wasn’t written until long after
His death! What did they call the OT in the time of
Jesus? John 1:45, Acts 13:15, Luke 24:44.
So when Jesus said these two laws were the
foundation of the law and the prophets, He meant
that the ENTIRE BIBLE was built on top of those
simple words! Or you could say that the whole of the
Old Testament could be merged and harmonized into
that simple sentence “Do unto others”!
That principle, when divided, contains “do unto God” and “do unto men”. But these two laws
themselves contain all the other laws in the Bible! To fully understand them, we must merge that
version of the story with Mark 12:28-31.
Notice that Matthew’s version commands us to love God with “heart, mind, and soul”, but Mark’s
version adds “strength”, as a way to love God. On the other hand, Matthew’s version includes “On
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”, which Mark omits. As always, to find
the full answer, we have to merge and harmonize ALL the information available!
Jesus said “Love God” was the greatest commandment – then proceeded to break that
commandment down into four sub-commandments! We were not merely told to love God, but to
love God in FOUR different ways! With all your heart (#1), mind (#2), soul (#3), and strength (#4).
So “do unto others”, contains “do unto God” and “do unto Men”. But Jesus just added another layer, a
whole new subgroup of laws! Now we see that “do unto God” contains “do unto God with your heart”,
“do unto God with your mind”, “do unto God with your soul” and “do unto God with your strength”!
THE 1-2-10 LAW
Go back and read the original Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17. You’ll notice that they easily
form two groups – #1-#4 are strictly about the way you treat God, and things God made holy. But5-#10 are about how we treat our fellow man. Was there a natural division of the Ten Commandments?
Exodus 31:18.So there were two tablets of stone, one for EACH of the great commandments! Get it? This is two
GREAT categories! One tablet giving details on how to treat God, and the other detailing how to treat
other men!And in that first category, there are FOUR divisions! Remember in Mark 12:28-31, “Love God” was
subdivided into four pieces – the fourth of which was to show love for God with “your strength”. Now
if you look at the fourth commandment given from Sinai, it was to “do no work” on the Sabbath God
made holy! By doing no work in order to keep God’s Sabbath holy, are you not honoring God with
your strength?And where do you worship other gods (commandment #1)? Deuteronomy 11:16, 29:18, etc. And
what was the very first thing Jesus mentioned as a way to love God? Mark 12:29-30. So it can only
mean that with your heart you break the first commandment, just as it is with your strength that you
break the fourth!Did Jesus ever subdivide the second great commandment? Matthew 19:16-19. In this version, Jesus cited commandments #5-#9, leaving out #10. But in another version of the same event, Mark
10:17-19, He referred to #10 by saying “defraud not”. Because coveting someone’s possessions leads
to you finding ways to defraud him of them!
So Jesus said that “do unto Men” contains six laws! Which happen to be the last six of the Ten
Commandments! But there is a third scripture which must be merged with these – Romans 13:8-10.
Pay special attention to the last part of verse 9! Paul said that all these laws – the last five of the Ten
Commandments – and many others – could be “all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself’” (NKJV).
Adding all these versions together, it is obvious that the last 6 commandments – and “others” – are
meant to be merged into ONE commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself”! What Jesus and
Paul were doing is simply merging and harmonizing the laws of God! And that’s exactly what
we’re doing!
One great law, “Do unto others”, contains all sub-laws, which are categorized by whether they apply to
God or our fellow man. Thus one law becomes two. But those two laws, according to Jesus and Paul,
contain another ten! So the top laws of the Bible can be expressed as a simple hierarchy – 1-2-10.
This is huge in its implications! It means that merging and harmonizing is at the heart of how God
set up the foundations of the Bible. It means that God Himself intended for the law, and the Bible in
general, to be understood this way! As a single law, a single concept, expanded into infinite variations!
YOU CAN’T BREAK JUST ONE
Did James treat the law as a unit composed of smaller pieces? James 2:8-12. Breaking any one of
the pieces of the law violates the whole law, for no matter how you harmed your neighbor, whether
you stole from him or lied to him, either way you
failed to love him as yourself!
Or suppose you honored God with your strength – that
your work went to honor God – but you did not honor
God in your heart, and served other gods. Whether you
failed to love God with your strength or with your heart,
either way you failed to love God and broke the
greater commandment!
The commandment is a package – breaking ANY of
its sub-laws is breaking the greater commandment, to
love God and treat Him as you would want to be
treated! Regardless of which sub-law was broken, you
broke THE law, the only law that matters: “do unto
others”!
If you steal from your neighbor, you have failed to love
him. If you lie to him, you have failed to love him.
Either way, you have failed to treat him as you would
want him to treat you, and thus have broken the
GREATER commandment which included both!
The law is a single idea that you should do to all
creatures as you would want them to do to you. Think
of it like a tree; whether you break a branch, or merely
break off a leaf, you have harmed the tree! One way
certainly hurts more than the other, but either way you
have harmed it.
And whether you steal a penny from your neighbor or
kill him, you have failed to love him as you love
yourself! And THAT is the trunk of the law!
Everything else is just branches and twigs!
THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
Once you understand that, you can quickly merge
existing laws and find behind each of them the same
principle of “do unto others”. For example, which of
the ten laws would kidnapping fall under? Exodus
21:16. What if your vicious dog kills someone? Verses
28-29. Which commandment could that be categorized
under? Exodus 20:13.
Why shouldn’t you avenge yourself? Romans 12:19. So technically, that’s stealing! What about
séances and witchcraft? Leviticus 19:31. Which law would that fall under? God is a spirit (John 4:24),
so if they seek other spirits, aren’t they in a sense seeking another god instead of the true God? Exodus
20:3.
This lesson began by mentioning a few apparently disconnected laws about marrying Canaanites
(Deuteronomy 7:1-3) and plowing with an ox and a donkey together (Deuteronomy 22:10). But now
you are ready to see they aren’t disconnected; in fact they are all the exact same law!
Why did God command Israel not to intermarry with the Canaanites? Exodus 34:14-16. So this law is
simply a sub-commandment of “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”! It was given specifically
to prevent them from being enticed by their spouses to serve other gods!
Does the New Testament have anything to say on that subject? 2 Corinthians 6:14-17. This is the
exact same commandment! Light (the church) should not be yoked together with darkness
(unbelievers) – because they would be pulling in different directions! One towards God, and one away
from Him!
And that brings us back to Deuteronomy 22:10, which you can easily see is the EXACT same law as
the other two! What’s more, in another one of God’s laws (Deuteronomy 14:4-7), oxen were clean (like Christians) and donkeys were unclean (like idolaters)!
Cows and donkeys have different strengths and different desires, and do not pull well together! And if
one pulls stronger than the other, they will inevitably be pulled aside off the straight and narrow way
that leads to life! (Matthew 7:14). So God made a law that they should not be unequally yoked, not just because He was thinking of the
oxen, but “altogether for OUR sakes”! (1 Corinthians 9:9-10). So all of these laws are in fact ONE
law! The same principle applied to different specific situations!
RIGHTLY DIVIDING
Since all existing laws can be merged into the 1-2-10, then every conceivable sin should be able to be
derived from that same law! How? 2 Timothy 2:15. We’ve mostly been merging the laws, but now we
are going to try dividing them into smaller laws that apply to new situations not covered in the Bible!
Because the division doesn’t stop at 1-2-10. Each of the ten laws contains infinite sub laws, which
can be adapted to any situation imaginable! For example, there is no commandment that says “thou
shalt not burn down the house of thy neighbor”. So according to the strict letter of the law that should
be allowed! Right?
Well, start at the beginning – the greatest law. If I were to burn your house down, would you like it?
Would I like it, if I were you? This alone makes it wrong, as it violates the greatest law! It also fails to
demonstrate love for my fellow man, which makes it wrong as it violates the second great law!
But can we categorize this particular sin under one of the ten sub-commandments? Would it not be
stealing? Taking something from you that is yours – even if I do not profit by it – is stealing! So even
though this particular sin is not specifically forbidden, the spirit of the law “thou shalt not steal”
plainly forbids burning down a house just as clearly as it forbids kidnapping!
The Bible also doesn’t say “thou shalt not use pirated software, music, and videos”. Yet that, too, is
obviously covered under thou shalt not steal – and if that wasn’t clear enough, simply take a step back,
look at the greatest law, and ask yourself “would I want my music appreciated for free? My videos
watched without getting payment for them?”
It is impossible to write down every conceivable sin – literally impossible! So God gave us principles,
guidelines, which we can divide and apply to any conceivable situation as it happens! Every way you
can imagine harming your neighbor is forbidden by the principle behind one of the great 10 laws!
We could make a million, a trillion specific laws, and never plug all the loopholes. That is precisely
what the Pharisees had tried to do. Yet with one simple statement “do unto others, as you would want
them to do unto you”, all loopholes are plugged instantly!
And to help us understand how they applied, God gave us the statutes and judgments and examples;
case studies to help us see HOW that law applies to many different situations – enough that we learn
how to adapt it to new circumstances. How are we to learn what good (righteousness) and evil (sin) are?
Hebrews 5:14.
If anyone had meditated on the commandments, and truly tried to understand what God was saying,
and why, they would have been able to extract all these other laws from it even if they hadn’t been
written down! (Psalms 119:96-100). Simply by “rightly dividing the word of truth”!
We don’t need God to give us a law saying “thou shalt not torrent music” – we simply need to divide
“do unto others”, into “love thy neighbor”, and then into “thou shalt not steal”, and then into “the
laborer is worthy of his hire” (1 Timothy 5:18), and then we can easily see that those who labored for
your music are not receiving their hire – and thus a new law is born! “Thou shalt not torrent music”!
A SIMPLE LAW
This is simple stuff! Stuff ANYONE can easily understand! And that’s why God set it up this way!
Whom did God want to understand the Bible? Matthew 11:25. Did the Pharisees believe that only
THEY could understand the law? John 7:47-49. Did Jesus say that was the problem? John 9:39-41.
Did God call people who were intelligent, wealthy, and respectable? 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. This is
why none of the disciples were Pharisees!
Did God intend for His way of life to be hard to understand, so that only educated religious men like
the Pharisees could interpret and explain it? Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Were those particular words
about the Old Covenant (OC) law, or about the righteousness of faith? Romans 10:6-8. How are God’s
words already in your mouth, and in your heart? Why did Moses and Paul say that these things were
NOT far off, nor difficult to understand? Romans 2:14.
If that doesn’t seem to answer the question, let me ask you a different one. Do you like to be stolen
from? Lied to? Murdered? Do you like it when your children disobey you? Then the law is not
hidden or far off from you! Which is how all those commandments can be SUMMED UP, or merged
and harmonized, into ONE phrase “love your neighbor as yourself!” (Galatians 5:14) – Paul’s words
to New Covenant Gentiles!
But it’s deeper than that. How does your dog react when another dog eats out of its food dish? How
does a cat feel when another cat comes sniffing around its mate? How does your child feel if you break
your promise? EVERYTHING understands the law of God! The entire Bible is ALREADY contained
in the hearts of every creature ever born!
…But there is one major problem. The same child that is furious when you lie to it, will glibly lie to
you! The same dog that hates it when another animal steals its food will eat from his neighbor’s dish at
the first opportunity! They fully understand the law of God BUT ONLY AS IT APPLIES TO OTHER
CREATURES!
No creature likes to be stolen from, but ALL will steal from others! All creatures will kill others, even
as they themselves struggle to stay alive! All covet, all deceive, all commit adultery, and all are
disobedient to parents! Yet ALL are angry if another creature does the same thing to them!
They ALL want other creatures to obey the laws of God, but refuse to be bound by them themselves!
And if even a DOG understands the law of God, how obvious should it be to us! How easy is it for US
to know the right thing to do!
We KNOW whether or not someone should steal from us! Definitely not! So God commands us to
rule ourselves by the same rule that we would place on them! “On these words rest all the Law and
the Prophets”! Matthew 22:40.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
God didn’t intend for the law He gave us to be complicated and difficult to understand. That’s why He
said it was with us, already in our hearts! Because everything already knows how it wants to be treated!
And that is the basis of all law!
God did not intend for it to be locked up in a temple someplace, where only priests could understand
and interpret it. That’s why He built the basic law of all human conduct on top of a very simple
principle that even a cockroach can understand! Think about it: who has ever treated HIMSELF
badly on purpose? Ephesians 5:29. Then if you treat others that way, you can’t be too wrong!
As I said in the beginning, I am not saying we should keep the old covenant laws; you’ll study what
we should or should not do in future lessons; yet Paul plainly, and repeatedly, said the principles
behind those old laws are still relevant to us today. They are still profitable for doctrine and
instruction; so don’t cut the Old Testament out of your Bibles.
There probably isn’t a Christian in the world who doesn’t believe in the Golden Rule. Yet most reject
the Old Testament; if not in principle, at least in practice. But you cannot reject one without rejecting
the other, for the OT is built upon the Golden Rule! We have that from Jesus’ own lips! The question
is… do you believe Him? Matthew 7:12.
Where can you draw the line between a good law, and a bad law? Can you really say that “muzzle not
thine ox” is against us, but “they that preach the gospel should earn a living from the gospel” is for us?
Can you honestly argue that “don’t plow with oxen and donkeys together” is a meaningless, ritualistic
law, but “don’t marry a non-Christian” is a good idea?
Since all of these laws, on the authority of Jesus Christ Himself, come from the same great axiom “do
unto others”, which are good and which are bad? Where can you separate “love your enemies” from
“if you see your enemy’s ox is lost, you must take him home”? (paraphrased from Exodus 23:4).
All these things are part of the same law; where can you separate one from another? To abolish a
single one of those principles is to abolish them all, for they are ALL based upon “love God and
your neighbor as yourself”. Do you really want to abolish “love your neighbor”? What sort of a
Christian wants to abolish love? The point I hope you take away from this lesson is 1 Timothy 1:8. You have seen a glimpse of the Truth that the law is not a jumbled mess of arbitrary laws from a capricious God. Instead, you’ve seen that all laws are harmonious pieces of a beautiful, perfect, holy principle that requires all men to treat others as they treat themselves.
What was one of Jesus’ goals when He came to this earth? Isaiah 42:21. That’s the job this lesson
continues; you’ve seen that the law is great, and that has made it honorable in your eyes. And now you
can understand what Paul meant when he told Gentiles “…the law is holy, and the commandment holy,
and just, and good” (Romans 7:12).
Think about that, and we’ll explain what part of the law WAS done away, and why, in the coming
lessons.