Torah + Christ = Equity

Leaving aside entirely the question of doctrinal "Supercessionism," there is something to be said about Christ's--and, later, Paul's--attitude towards the Moasic Law that exemplifies justice's allied virtue, namely equity.  Let's look at two Biblical texts.

The first is Mark 2:27, "And [Jesus] said to them, 'The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath, so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath,'" whereby the Lord explains that the Sabbath mitzvot does not exist for its own sake but for the benefit of people and animals, to given them respite from labour (cf Deut 5:12-14).  Contextually, the Apostles were collecting grains to snack on one Sabbath as they there taking a leisurely walk--obviously no matter of labour or breadwinning.  The point of the Sabbath mitzvot was not to satisfy a debt to the Law or to God, but to satisfy a human need for respite and recreation--which is why it was enshrined in the Torah.

What Jesus is doing here is applying the virtue of equity to an Old Testament commandment, that is to say, to retrieve the intention of the Lawgiver which would otherwise be entirely set aside were the letter of the Law to be enforced in the case of the hungry Apostles.  Aquinas finds a clear-as-a-bell explanation of equity in the Code of Justinian:  "Without doubt he transgresses the law who by adhering to the letter of the law strives to defeat the intention of the lawgiver" (cf S.th., 2a 2ae, q. 120, art. 1, ad 1).  Thus it was the Pharisees, for all of their meticulous observance of the Mosaic Law, who actually contravened it.  It is through the lens of equity that we ought to read, to take another example, the saying of Jesus, "What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will nto lay hold of it and lift it out?"  Then, with no apologies to PETA, comes the sucker-punch:  "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep.  So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath" (Mt 11:1112).  Here, again, Jesus points out that the intention of the Lawgiver--YHWH--is never to demand man's observance of the Torah to his own detriment.  The Mosaic Law exists for the good of the human person.

(Perhaps this might be seen as the 'Copernican Revolution' in religion--religious observances were established not to placate a deity but to uphold human dignity.)

The second Biblical text is Acts 15:19-21, where the "apostles and presbyters" convened at Jerusalem to decide upon the first dogmatic quaeritur:  Are the newly-Christianised Gentiles beholden to the Mosaic Law?  James 'the Just' gave the following verdict, as it were:

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is trangled and from blood.  For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sabbath in the synagogues.

A number of exegetes recognise in this Apostolic decree a kind of re-issuance of the "Noachide Laws" which, according to Rabbincal Judaism, are the 'prime commandments' of the entire Torah, that is, every one of the 613 mitzvot can be traced to one or another of sevenfold Noachide Law.  Thus Verse 21, "For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him...":  The general consensus among commentators is that these 'Noachide Laws' were already familiar to Jewish Christians, and so it would be redundant to reissue the prohibitions outside the circles of Gentile Christianity, again implying that the Noachide Laws were already inherent in the Mosaic Law.

Throughout the Torah, God commands that this or that observance is to be "for all generations" and the like.  Is it possible that the fact of Christians no longer observing the Kosher and purity laws, &c., owes to an equitable application of the Mosaic Law, which boils down to the ones enjoined upon Noah--and thus acutally perpetuating their observance?  If this is the case, I do wonder if it may be an interpretative key to the contemproary debate surrounding the "New Perspective on Paul" with respect to Christians' relationship with the Old Testament and to contextualise the conversation in a post-Shoah Europe.