Law & Gospel: Law

By Steven Newell

This is the second of a four part series on Law and Gospel that as originally posted on post-emergent.com on May 2, 2006.

For most Christians, the Law is the Ten Commandments while others consider the Law to be the entire Mosaic Law. The Law is what God demands for us to do and not do. We see the Law through both the Old and New Testaments. As God gave the Law through Moses, Christ gave us the Law in the four Gospels.

Law: Implicit and Explicit

The Law comes in to us in two forms: implicit and explicit. Another way to think about the Law is that we have revealed law (what is in the scripture) and nature law (what we see in nature). We are subject to both types.

Explicit, or revealed law, is what most Christians are aware of. We can find this starting in Genesis 3 where God commands Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam ate, he sinned. Through both the Old and New Testament, God has revealed His Law through direct revelation so that we might know what God demands and expects. Through Moses, God gave us the Ten Commandments as well as all of Mosaic Law. Christ is also the Law Giver. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that our thoughts, not just our actions, are subject to the Law. If I hate someone, it is the same a murdering them (Matthew 5:21-22). 

The Implicit, or natural law, is what God has revealed, not through His word to us, but by nature. The natural law that I refer to is not the same as “Natural Law” that many in the legal and political areas refer to.  St. Paul referred to this type of law in Romans 1:20 

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

 This type of God’s law is seen in three stories found in Genesis. Cain knew that killing his Abel was wrong when God confronted him (Genesis 4). Prior to the great flood, man’s wickedness was noted as the cause of God’s judgment (Genesis 6 and 7). Finally, Joseph knew that adultery was wrong when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him (Genesis 39). In each story, God’s law was evident even though God had not pronounced His Law to man. This law is also evident in many societies, throughout history, were actions such as murder, stealing and lying are considered crimes.

 Law: It’s Purpose

The chief purpose of the Law is to show us God’s perfect standard and our complete failure to obey it perfectly. No one is made righteous before a Holy God by trying to fulfill all of the requirements of the Law. In Romans 3:10-18, St. Paul quotes various Psalms passages to support the point that there is no one who is righteous before God. When we look to the Law to validate our righteousness, we only find ourselves becoming conscious of sin. Why is that? God demands perfect obedience of the Law and when we look at ourselves, we realize how sinful we really are.

God does not grade on the curve or give partial credit. We see that in Joshua 1:8 where God demands that Joshua must carefully to everything that is in the “Book of the Law” in order to have success and prosperity. Joshua’s success is not due to Joshua’ obedience of the law, rather to God’s grace, despite Joshua’s sin. Jesus commands us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

 The priest Isaiah saw “the Lord seated on a throne”, his reaction as to cry “Woe to me!” and “For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips”. It was God’s action of mercy that resulted in Isaiah’s sin being atoned for. (Isaiah 6). When we begin to understand how holy God is and how sinful we are, our reaction will be like that of Isaiah. It’s the Law that shows us how great of divide there is between God and us.

In St. John’s first Epistle, he wrote that if we say that we deny we have sinned, we deny the truth and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8-10). Why do we sin?  St. John answers this question by saying anyone who breaks the law is sinning and sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4)

Law: The Solution

Since we are all sinners and we cannot perfectly keep the Law of God, what do we do? There is nothing that we can do. At this point, we can only be like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable where we also cry “God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. This is the sinner’s prayer that all should pray, both Christian and non-Christians.

Even before our cry for mercy, God showed us his mercy in Christ. In the next section, the Gospel will show how through Christ, God has fulfilled the Law so that we may find life.

Comments

[Larry - KY]

This brings up a question I ponder a lot concerning the Law, whether we mean explicit (published) Law like the Ten Commandments or implicit (natural) law as seen in nature and written upon our hearts. What, I often think, is the prime or real sin against the Law? Here’s what I mean: You have a command that says “don’t do X” (or a positive “do Y”). Is the failure against the law “disobedience” as we normally perceive the nuance of that word and likewise “obedience”. OR is the REAL failure not disobedience/obedience per se but the fact that you don’t naturally “just do it” from the heart, relationally, without the command? Because there is a way to speak of the term “command” and it’s just a “military” type of idea, yet there is another way, rarely though understood this way, that “command” can mean and have a heartful filial-ness to it. We could say the same with “obedience”, “disobedience” and similar terms. If one is “obedient” “militarily” one could still be devoid of the heart. I often wonder what did the ears of pre-fallen Adam and Eve hear when they heard the Lord say not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Did they hear a “military command” or something so naturally to their hearts to do it wasn’t command but a “loving command” if you will. Attempting to give these word’s a nuance is difficult so I’m using these adjectives “military command/obedience/disobedience” Vs. “loving command/obedience” as antithetical ideas.

The reason I ask this is that one hears the “law” kind of preached but its more the “military” nuance of “be obedient”, in more conservative circles, as opposed to the “filial” or ‘from a true heart’. It seems to me that the preaching of the Law, at least in my experience, that touched at the heart level, I wasn’t doing it, is the real “cutting to the heart”. I recall the first time the Law, though I didn’t think of it that way (law), was preached along with the cross to me and what cut me more than anything was not rank disobedience, I had heard that before and it only hardened my resolve. But rather that finally I saw it at the heart level. It was in a sense seeing the real love of God, altruistic, and seeing myself against that as utterly “selfish” and that broke me to see myself for who I really was. The agony, if we can use that term correctly, was not the agony of “you’ve disobeyed this tyrant god whose been holding you down”, that view of god only always hardened me more. No, the real agony was that God on the Cross for me, seeing that love (Law) in action, and then I couldn’t stand to see myself next to that kind of love. Seeing me against that “love” (love = law, real love) was too much to bear and that broke through the hardness of my heart. Now, I admit that’s my own experience.

So, it has always bothered me for people, particularly the ministry, to say they are bothered as God only being preached as “love”. I understand what they are reacting against in liberal circles because “love” is being used differently for God. But more often than not those “more conservative” types reacting against “God is love” more “liberal” preaching only go over to the “god the tyrant” type of law. It seems to me neither understand Law or Love or The God of Law which is ultimately true Love. It’s that true altruistic love, however, that we really violate and not just military disobedience. To my ear a person or pastor that conveys the “military God, military law” makes me hear much like the younger son, the prodigal, reacting against the older son’s interpretation of the father. But on the other hand when I hear a more liberal false god/law/love there is a tendency for my conservative older brother side raise up and react as the older son did. It’s when the God of Law/love as revealed at the prodigal’s return, the father kissing him on the neck, embarrassing himself is preached that the reaction is just like the prodigal’s, “I’m unworthy to be called your son” arises. Which is in fact the same as saying, “have mercy on me a sinner”, “depart from me I’m a sinful man”, “woe to me I am undone” and etc…

To me that’s the real preaching of the Law and the hardest of all to do. It’s easy as pie to preach a military conservative “law”, it takes no brains or effort whatsoever to muster up that kind of speech. And it’s easy to preach a “love” and by extension liberal law for the same reasons. It’s easy as pie to preach like either the younger or older son, but the real challenge is to preach the REAL law. Because it has to get to the heart level and thus show one what one is. The other “law” sermons only lead to further hardening one way or the other. To me it takes an incredible turning of words to do this in a “proclamation” way. E.g. how do you ‘get across’ the nuance of command other than the army type of command which will only serve to harden the open sinner to flee deeper into the far off land, and delude more the false saint into thinking they are the good obedient elder son? To me the “law” doesn’t really come about to life until the Cross is preached with it or connected.

Do we have in the liberal church circles one gigantic younger son prodigal and in the conservative church circles one gigantic older son? Because often if you listen to exchanges between the two you can “hear” that “those two sons” type of conversation going on in their language to each other with the older brother driving the younger brother out of the land.

That’s why I cringe when I hear some say liberals preach that God is only love and they should not. Well, yes they do preach it with love being wrong, but technically speaking God is exemplified by His Holy Law and His Holy Law is summed up as love in a way we refuse to understand, utterly altruistic. And that altruistic selfless love, THAT, is what drives true conviction, not the military idea of “law” and obedience. Disobedience, then it seems, has its roots in that “military” type of obedience and disobedience, that is no love at all. On this side of grace the “military law” begins to transform into the “loving law”. Because nothing chaffs both a liberal law preacher/person and a conservative law preacher/person more than to show BOTH of them that any “law they do” is utterly unloving. And THAT kind of reaction, even if it is just guessed at and slung at them, proves that their ‘law doing’ (or preaching) was no love at all and hence no law at all. For the very angry reaction proves that the ‘law doing’ they are mad about because one said it was unloving (and by extension not really the holy Law) shows that in fact was and still is unloving. Because if it was truly “loving” (and truly Holy Law) even if it is rejected as loving, then they’d be silent before the shearers as was Jesus.

Larry – KY