Precept Upon Precept, Line Upon Line

There seems to be a growing spirit of lawlessness in the church today. The commandments of God are rejected by Christians based on the idea that the law of Christ supersedes the law of the Old Testament. The following Bible verses are used as proof texts.

Galatians 6:2 (KJV)
² Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Mark 12:28-31 (KJV)
²⁸ And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
²⁹ And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
³⁰ And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
³¹ And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Rather than understanding that the Mark passage is a summation of the law of God, it is said that the 613 laws contained in the Old Testament are REDUCED to two. Then, by a faulty understanding of the law of Christ and Christian liberty there are pastors that preach that the only law that anyone has to obey is the law of love! So, even an action that is against the law can now be the "loving" thing to do and is no longer prohibited (e.g. speeding to the hospital with a wounded person in the car or stealing to feed your family).

Galatians 5:1 (KJV)
¹ Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Galatians 5:13 (KJV)
¹³ For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

But the problem with this line of thought is that each individual then becomes the arbiter of what is right and wrong. This sounds like the book of Judges and God was not pleased.

Judges 17:6 (KJV)
⁶ In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

In this week's haftarat reading, Isaiah had something to say about God's law.

Isaiah 28:10-12 (KJV)
¹⁰ For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:
¹¹ For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.
¹² To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

Isaiah was expressing disgust over the prophets and priests of his day that were drunken. They responded in verse 10 by mimicking what Isaiah had tried to teach, reducing his warnings of not returning to God to mere building blocks that only babies would listen to. In verse 11 Isaiah informed the prophets and priests that since they would not listen to the instruction of God they would learn from foreign invaders, the Assyrians. Then in verse 12 Isaiah stated that the instructions of God, the precept upon precept, line upon line, and here a little, and there a little were meant as a means of life that lead to rest for the weary, a refreshing, but they would not listen.

God wrote His Law so that by living precept upon precept we would find rest and refreshing. We learn what love looks like by reading the whole Bible and committing to the obedience of those precepts and lines. Without the Old Testament law the law of Christ makes no sense.