When people ask me whether Christians need to keep this command, I explain this is the wrong question. The question for me as a Christian is not, “Do I have to keep this law?” but rather, “How does God, my Redeemer and covenant Lord, expect me to keep this law?”

Are we at The Gospel Coalition a little too excited—misguided, even—about Christ in the Old Testament? Do we tend to champion typological readings at the cost of exegetical care?

Daniel Block, a respected evangelical Old Testament scholar whose new commentary on Deuteronomy will be a valuable addition to any believer’s shelf, wonders if some evangelicals today have fumbled the ball when it comes to handling the Old Testament. He certainly raises an important question. How should followers of the risen Christ read the Old Testament Scriptures in a properly anticipatory (cf. Luke 24:27, 44) yet hermeneutically responsible manner?

I corresponded with Block, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College outside Chicago, about why he thinks Deuteronomy may be more like John than Romans, whether Jesus is a new Moses, whether TGC’s Preaching Christ in the Old Testament section is beneficial, and more.

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What do you perceive to be the most significant misunderstanding about Deuteronomy in evangelical circles today?

People too often believe Moses’ role in the book is primarily one of a lawgiver, and so the book is classified generically as “law” rather than pastoral preaching. The translators of the Septuagint set the history of interpretation on a wrong course when they named the book deutero-nomos, meaning “second law,” and consistently translated the word torah in the book as “law.” This word means “teaching, instruction.” As used in the book, it has exactly the same semantic range as Greek’s didaskalia or didachē. I wonder what our disposition toward the book would be had the translators called it by one of these names or simply translated the Hebrew title, ­’ēlleh hadděbārîm (“These Are the Words”).

It’s widely recognized that Deuteronomy is a series of sermons delivered to the Israelite congregation on the Plains of Moab. Why is Moses’ uniquely pastoral role in this book significant?

If the book is so widely recognized as Mosaic preaching, why do we continue to refer to its contents as “law”? Both Moses and the narrator of his death use only one professional title for Moses: “prophet” (Deut. 18:18; 34:10). Indeed, the principle verbs used to characterize his verbal activity in the book are “to speak” (‘āmar, 1:5; 5:1) and “to teach” (limmēd, 4:1, 5, etc.). Moses is in no position to legislate; only YHWH, the divine king, has that authority.

This pastor-teacher role is reinforced by the historical context of the addresses. Moses, the congregation’s shepherd/pastor (Num. 27:17), is about to die. What we have are the sermons Moses delivered at the time, a closing hymn [national anthem] he taught the people (Deut. 32), and his final benediction (Deut. 33). Unless we rediscover Deuteronomy’s pastoral dimension, we’ll misconstrue Moses’ function within the document, obscure the nature of its contents, and muffle its repeated declarations of the gospel (once Israel was a slave to Pharaoh, but through YHWH’s gracious acts she’s been rescued and declared by covenant to be his “son” [14:1-2]).

Why doesn’t it surprise you that Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy more often than from any other biblical book?

There are probably three reasons. The first two relate to two of the fundamental convictions of the New Testament (NT) regarding Jesus. First, the NT is emphatic that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah. Jesus views himself as the fulfillment and the embodiment of the covenant righteousness called for in Deuteronomy (cf. Matt. 5:17). He’s the ultimate king, chosen by YHWH from among his people Israel, whose heart and mind are filled with the Torah, who doesn’t depart from it to the right or to the left, whose head isn’t lifted above his countrymen, and who, because of his faithfulness, is granted eternal kingship (Deut. 17:14-20). In short, he’s the fulfillment of Israel’s royal messianic hope.

Second, Jesus is YHWH (John 1:23; Rom. 10:13, etc.). Therefore, he’s not merely a Moses figure, but the one in whose name Moses spoke throughout Deuteronomy and who inspired all his utterances (cf. “as YHWH commanded him,” 1:4; “as YHWH commanded me,” 4:5, 14; 6:1). Should we be surprised Jesus is so familiar with Deuteronomy?

Third, Jesus seeks to recapture and recover the spirit of Deuteronomy. Both Jesus and Paul were opposed by representatives of forms of Judaism that had lost the heart of the gospel as promulgated by Moses on the Plains of Moab. By reducing the commandments to a single statement (“You shall demonstrate love for YHWH your God totally and for your neighbor as you do for yourself”), Jesus captured the essence of covenantal relationship—the opposite of what he saw among the self-serving Pharisees. By accusing them of keeping the minutest tithing regulations but neglecting the “weightier matters of Torah” (Matt. 23:23), he called his followers back to the spirit of the Torah and the covenant as espoused in Deuteronomy.

“More than any other book in the Old Testament (if not the Bible as a whole),” you contend, “Deuteronomy concretizes the life of faith in real life.” How should “real life” under the old covenant law influence believers on a daily basis today?

Chris Wright helpfully speaks of Israel’s constitutional texts (my expression for what most call law codes) as presenting a picture of righteous living that’s “paradigmatic” for God’s people in all contexts for all time. Let me concretize the issue with a specific example: In Deuteronomy 22:8 Moses says, “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.” When people ask me whether Christians need to keep this command, I explain this is the wrong question. The question for me as a Christian is not, “Do I have to keep this law?” but rather, “How does God, my Redeemer and covenant Lord, expect me to keep this law?”

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Matt Smethurst serves as associate editor for The Gospel Coalition and lives in Louisville, Kentucky.