The Law (1)

THE LAW (1)

What does a Christian do with God’s law – especially when it seems to set a standard that is far higher than we are able to keep?

The response below is about making sure you haven't turned God's Law into rules that are detached from the power of God to make them happen.

The Bible presents God’s Law as God’s statement of righteous behaviour for humans. The Law represents God’s personal standards translated into a human setting. God’s law defines how a godly person should behave; in other words, like God!

The Old Testament makes God’s law explicit. In Deuteronomy Moses reminds Israel how they received the Law but then failed to follow it, resulting in failure to enter the Promised Land.

At first, they were too mindful of their own inability to defeat the enemies that held the land, and later too sure that by their own efforts they could make it happen. Both these failures were a failure of faith  in the God revealed in the law. It was not just rules they broke – they broke faith. They did not trust the God revealed to them in the law.

So, God rebuffed Israel at the edge of the Promised Land and sent them to wander for a generation (40 years) in the wilderness outside that land. During that period virtually an entire generation died out, so that their children and grandchildren were the ones (at the time of Deuteronomy) who stood at the edge of the Promised Land. They were about to go in under the leadership of Joshua because even Moses he had stumbled when driven to frustration by his people’s complaining.

In Deuteronomy, Moses is summing up their present situation and putting in front of them once again the Law of God – the keeping of which would determine whether they were blessed--living and prospering in the new land--or whether they were cursed and perished.

Read Deuteronomy chapters 1-6

The Israelites received the Law in written form (as statutes and rules) – but when Jesus Christ came it was embodied and demonstrated.

Jesus represented and fulfilled every aspect of the Law perfectly. And whereas, in the past, there was a great burden of animal sacrifice in the Temple, to teach the people that sinning against God costs life – when Christ came, he was the Lamb, given by God. He was without sin, a perfect sacrifice, to pay for the litany of broken laws that we all have piled up against ourselves.

Colossians 2.13 You, who were spiritually dead because of your sins and your uncircumcision (i.e. the fact that you were outside the Law), God has now made to share in the very life of Christ! He has forgiven you all your sins: Christ has utterly wiped out the damning evidence of broken laws and commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it over his own head on the cross. And then having drawn the sting of all the powers ranged against us, he exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in his final glorious triumphant act!

What then does a Christian do with God’s Law as given in the Old Testament? 
Answer: The same as Moses, Joshua, Caleb and other faithful Israelites; receive it as a revelation of God’s character and his will for his people and put faith in the God it reveals.

There are two ways of using the Law – one right, the other wrong.

1. You may use the Law as list of demands and expectations to live up to – so that you can be sure of God’s favours as he rewards you for obedience. (That is the wrong way).

2. Receive the Law as an insight into the character of God and his will for you. You trust this revelation of God, having faith in him to reshape you in his image. (That’s the right way)

Take a specific example of these two ways a person might use the Law:
God’s Law says, “You shall not steal.” This rule reveals specific things about God. For example,

• It shows that God is just and fair and that the doesn’t want people to live in the fear of having what belongs to them ripped away by someone else. He is a defender of the righteous.
• It shows that if we need things we may not take the law into our own hands and rip them away from others, but that we should approach God for our needs. He is the provider for his people.
• It also reveals that God himself is the owner of everything, including people, and he will not stand by and allow people to use, abuse and destroy his things without consequence. He is a Judge who holds everyone accountable for what they do with his property.

So, a believer in the God of the Bible, could take that one law (‘don’t steal’) and use it in two ways:

1. She could use that ‘don’t steal’ law as a rule that she will keep so as to avoid being punished and earn rewards from God for keeping it; OR,

2. She could accept what this teaches her about God and God’s will for people, and put her faith in God to help her keep on the right side of this law, because she wants to please him, she wants be like him and she wants her life to display his glory.

The difference is that in the first way of taking the law, ‘don’t steal’, she is looking to God as the author of the law, ‘don’t steal’ but looking to herself to keep it. In the second way of responding to the law she is looking to God for everything – both for the instruction on how to live properly, and for the ability to do so.

There is another major difference between these two ways of taking the law. In the second case, she is expecting an intervention by God in her thinking, attitude and behaviour. But in the first, she wants God to remain at arms’ length - in the sense that she is going to offer something to him (her honest, non-stealing behaviour). This is rather like the way a pagan leaves an offering at an idol, then moves away again, hoping the idol will stay put and not cause her any trouble.

We can take this right back to the first couple in the garden. God gave them a law, ‘don’t steal fruit from this particular tree’. (In fact if you do, you will die). Eve did not respond in the way we have been talking about. She did not take a stance of faith in God to help keep her on the right side of this law because she wanted to please God and be like God. She chose the ‘arms-length' option which led her to sin. She separated the law (‘don’t eat from that tree’) from God himself, so that it became a rule she was making a decision about – rather than a rule that revealed something about God and gave her an opportunity to lean on God to keep it.

As soon as she put herself in what she thought was a 'neutral' position of deciding what to do with the rule – her sinning was guaranteed to happen. She put God at arm’s length. She put a gap between the rule and God and this allowed room for the Tempter to exploit that gap and for her own wrong desires to come into play. She broke the law and ate.

So what you do with the Law (any and every rule or guideline from God) is no small matter. If you are an unbeliever, you are always on the wrong side of the Law. Because even when you agree with it (e.g. ‘don’t kill’) you are failing to keep it, because you have snapped it off from God. You are failing to consider what God is saying to YOU about that Law. For example: Jesus said (Matt 5.21-22) that when you use abusive language against someone who has made you angry, you have picked up the same piece of string that has murder at the other end of it. Hateful language is on the continuum to murder. So an unbeliever is always on the wrong side of the law.

This teaching is for believers. I want to warn you about unplugging God’s law (rules) from God himself. Yes even a Christian might do this. In fact this is one of the major causes of stress in a Christian’s life: Trying to ‘do the law’ in a way that will attract God’s blessing and avoid his disapproval. To treat God’s Law in that way is to fail to notice that the law is an expression of God himself and he alone can express in you the behaviour that matches that law. It can’t happen without him. This is why Jesus not only died to take the penalty the Law demands for your transgressions – but he also gives the Holy Spirit so that you can have behaviour that matches the Law.

Consider this: Galatians 3
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

For a Christian, the Law gives us insight into God’s righteous character and translates that into behaviour expectations for our lives.
We must not ‘snap off’ those laws and try to use them as rules to apply in our own wisdom or effort. Rather, they are an invitation to faith. We agree with God's law and put our faith in God to write it on our minds and hearts and move us to love it and perform it. This is why we begin with the Spirit and must continue with him as we live out our lives in Christ. Gal 3.3