Understanding the Law

It seems to me that there are few subjects in the church today that are more commonly misunderstood and misrepresented than that of the law and the grace of God. And because a right understanding of these two things can be helpful towards a true experiencing of them, and also towards a discarding of many false ideas and expectations regarding them, it is in my heart to try to share some things that I hope will be helpful to some. 

I’d like to begin by saying something that I say quite often: My aim in sharing these things is not primarily to help people come away with correct information. There is a wrong, or confused emphasis today on acquiring correct doctrine, as though believing right things, and disproving wrong things were the real objective of teaching and learning. Let me say plainly that this is not true. Possessing right information is not the goal. God is not seeking well-informed humans. He is seeking to put to death in the soul of man every form of sin, evil, enmity, darkness, death, selfishness, and pride, all of which should never have had a birth or appearance in His pure creation. And He is seeking to give, form, and fully establish the life, light, nature, and righteousness of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the heart of every man and woman. 

Teaching has an appropriate place in the church, but ever since men began trying to be Christians without the Spirit of Christ, teaching has been elevated and magnified far out of its place. The goal of our instruction is not knowledge. On the contrary, Paul says, “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Tim 1:5 NASB). And I believe that teaching or instruction can help us towards love (which is the nature of God reigning in soul of man) primarily when it helps us in the following two ways: 1) When it presents to man a true description of what man is, what God is, and what God desires to do in man, and 2) When it teaches us how to live (during our short stay in the body) in such a way as to yield or submit to the power of God’s grace; or you could say, how to not resist, grieve, and quench the work of His Spirit.

If you were to attend a church service where the pastor or priest was teaching that God accepts you just the way you are in your fallen condition, and that the outward work of Christ on the cross had reconciled God with man’s sinful condition, I would say that this is a very wrong and dangerous teaching. But WHY is it dangerous? It is not dangerous just because it is false, inaccurate, or unbiblical (though it is indeed false, inaccurate and unbiblical). I mean, it is not dangerous just because it suggests an inaccurate idea to your brain. It is dangerous because believing such an idea will set your life and your heart on a completely wrong course, or in a wrong and hopeless direction. Believing the aforementioned doctrine changes what you seek from God, what you expect from Him. It changes what you understand about your life, your purpose, and what you’re supposed to be doing in your short time here. It changes what you think is possible to experience in your heart and in your life. False teachings such as this lay a foundation for a fictitious relationship with God, where you expect from Him what He will never do, and fail to understand or seek what He is continually desiring to do.

True teaching, on the other hand, doesn’t just give you correct doctrines and creeds and articles of faith. It gives you a right understanding of God’s will, His nature, His purpose. It helps you understand who He is, what He desires, and how He is seeking to bring it about in you. It also helps you to understand what it means to cooperate with the will of God and not resist Him. And when I say cooperate I do not mean contribute, or add something of spiritual life or righteousness or salvation from ourselves. I mean simply how we can live in such a way that His purpose for us, and His power in us, are not resisted, frustrated or hindered; or in other words, how we are to walk with Him and not grieve or quench His Holy Spirit. 

I mention this as an introduction to these teachings on law and grace, because (I hope I can honestly say that) the goal of my instruction here is also love from a pure heart. To understand what the law of God is, whether it is good or bad, why it exists, and how it is fulfilled, has been extremely helpful for me. And to understand what grace is, where it is found, how it appears and works in man, how to surrender my life to its workings, and not to “receive the grace of God in vain,” (2 Cor. 6:1) — this has been one of the most important and practical things that I have ever come to understand. 

A short summary of these things has been given previously in the blog post here. But I intend to go a little further and deeper into these subjects now.

What is the law of God? To answer this question, I think we need to take one step back and ask another question: what is a law? Often, the first thing that comes to mind is that a law is simply a rule or a commandment, but the word law involves more than this. Some laws are indeed just commandments, but there are many different kinds of laws. In the natural world there are laws of nature, civil laws, laws of physics, traffic laws, etc. And in Scripture we read of the Mosaic Law, a law of sin and death, a law of righteousness, a law of liberty, a law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, etc. In Romans 7, Paul talks about finding two different and contrary laws working within him.

The best way that I see to define the reality of law is to say that it is a constant truth or reality, that never changes, and that demands obedience or conformity when acting upon something else. This definition works nicely for all different kinds of laws. The law of gravity, for example, is a constant truth or reality that never changes and that demands obedience or conformity whenever it is acting upon something else. A traffic law is a constant reality, that does not change because of man’s opinions or desires, and that demands obedience or conformity when acting upon all drivers. What about the law of sin? Sin is a constant reality or nature, that never changes. It always seeks self, evil, and darkness, and when it is acting upon man, it demands obedience and conformity, making slaves of all who walk in it.

Law didn’t start with Moses. Law started with God, and it started as something good, perfect, wonderful and righteous. Before the fall, God’s life and nature WAS the law that governed all created things. I’m not talking about written or spoken rules or commandments. I mean that the very life of God—who He was, how He was, what He was and knew and felt and saw and loved, His very nature, life, and light, God manifesting Himself—this was the constant truth or reality that never changed, and that acted upon all of His creation, bringing it into a living conformity to Himself, a living state of glory. This was not a forced conformity to outward rules. This was an inward conformity and unity, a living reality that, when acting upon all of creation, brought it all into a perfect alignment and conformity with its Creator.

In the beginning, everything in creation lived happily and harmoniously in and by the law of God. That is, every created thing and being, animate and inanimate, kept its place and position in the will and power of God, and there was nothing contrary to Him, nothing that opposed His nature, His life, His government. This was a state of glory. I mean, both the visible and invisible universe was an environment created to joyfully receive and display the wonders and perfections and attributes of God. All things naturally kept His law. It was their created state or abode. All things happily submitted to His government, and this happy submission brought about both their highest happiness and God’s greatest glory.

Now there were at least two types of beings that were created to receive and manifest an even greater measure of God’s glory than the rest of creation, and these two beings are called men and angels. Unlike the rest of the natural creation, men are specifically said to have been created “in the image and likeness of God.” And by what we read of them in Scripture, I assume angels to have been created with much the same purpose. But both of these beings, in receiving a greater capacity for glory, also received a greater freedom to turn against the law of God, to yield to or break away from the law of God’s life, purpose, and nature. 

And this, we read, is precisely what happened. Some of the angels, “did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode,” (Jude 1:6) and so now are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.” These were the first lawbreakers, that is, the first thing found in all of creation that transgressed the holy law of God’s perfect nature and will. They refused to be acted upon by His living truth. They refused conformity to His eternal will. They broke His spiritual law, and quickly found in themselves the horrible fruit of their own choice. From glorious angels, they become miserable demons. They were cast out of their heavenly abode, and now wander this world in a dark and contrary nature “seeking whom they may devour.” (1 Pet. 5:8)

Tragically, mankind soon followed in their footsteps. Man was the crown of the natural creation, the clearest image and likeness of the invisible God. But he too used the gift of his will—a gift given so that he could turn to, look to, cling to, love, adore and worship the perfect goodness of His creator—he used his will to turn away from His God, and to reach for the lusts of his earthly eyes, the lusts of his flesh, and the pride of his carnal life. In this way he too transgressed the living law of God. He stepped out of his proper domain, left his heavenly abode in the will and nature of God, and brought disorder, deformity, and a curse upon all the creation below.

And so, suddenly, another law was found working in the creation of God. And what was this new law? It was the LAW OF SIN AND DEATH. What is the law of sin and death? It is another unchanging reality or nature, that demands obedience or conformity from everything that it acts upon. Sin is contrariness or enmity to the perfect law of God. It is the presence of something else living and growing in the creation of God, something that lives by a contrary will that has no heavenly right to be there. It is like a cancer growing on a human body. It uses the energy of the body to destroy the body. It has its own will, its own increase, its own objective, all of which is NOT the will of the person in whom the cancer is growing. Sin is very much like a cancer that suddenly appeared in the perfect creation of God. And everything that lives by this new contrary and disorderly will is made conformable to it, is made a slave to it, and is led by it to death. This is the law of sin and death. 

They answered Him, “We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.”—John 8:33-34

Now, as long as this new law was governing the hearts and lives of man, there was nothing that could be done for their salvation and happiness. As long as men were slaves to sin, they would necessarily die in their sins, and could not return to man’s original condition. Forgiveness of sin isn’t the solution to this problem. Forgiveness is wonderful, but it cannot kill this cancer, or heal the diseased creation. What man needed was a way to come back into and under the original law of God’s nature and purpose and will. But in order to do this, he had to be born back into God’s life. He had to be regenerated.

But before we get to that, we need to look at the law of Moses, which was a written law of righteous commands and ordinances that Paul says was “added because of transgression.” Galatians 3:19 says, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made.” What does this mean? It means that an outward law (which is like a traffic law, or a civil law) was placed UPON man because the law of God’s life or nature (which is more like the law of gravity) ceased to work IN him. In other words, because the life and nature of righteousness was no longer governing man from within, God added a written law to govern him from without, until the Seed of His life brought a birth in man of the nature that he had lost.  

When God called His people out from the slavery of Egypt, He placed them under the written law that He delivered to Moses. This law was not just an arbitrary system of rules and regulations. The Mosaic  law was an outward description, a physical representation or mirror of the living law of righteousness that Adam and Eve had forsaken and lost. Do you understand what I mean? The written law was not CONTRARY to the law of life that once governed the soul of man and all of creation. It was simply WEAK because it was an outward description and requirement of righteousness, instead of an inward nature of righteousness.  Christians sometimes speak as though the mosaic law was a bad thing. But Paul says it was “holy, just, and good.” (Rom 7:12) There WAS indeed something bad involved in man’s relationship with the law, but it was not the law itself. It was the fact that the outward, written law of commandments could not change or stop the inward law of sin and death that was governing the soul of man. The problem with the written law, was that it was only words written on a stone, and not on the human heart. It was only a description of righteousness, and not the life of righteousness. And because of this, all it could do was point out and manifest (in a multitude of different ways) all of the evil and impurity and disease that man had brought upon himself by making himself a slave to the law of sin and death. 

So, I would like to say this very clearly: There is nothing wrong or bad about the written law of God. It is true that Scriptures speaks of Christians becoming free from the curse of the law, and the burden of the law, and the condemnation of the law, but this is NOT because the law is bad in itself. It is because flesh is bad, sin is bad, and the written law could do nothing but point out and condemn its contrary nature.

And it is for this reason that Paul sometimes refutes wrong thinking on this point in his letters. For instance: 

Romans 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law.

Galatians 3:21  Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not!

Romans 7:12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. 

The written law was never bad or wrong. It was only weak, because it could not stop the law of sin and death. In Romans 8:3 Paul says the law was “weak through the flesh.” The author of Hebrews says that the former commandment was “annulled because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect.” (Heb. 7:18-19). Again, the written law was weak and unprofitable because it could not stop the law of sin and death that governed the soul of man. 

Imagine that an enormous tree in my yard began to sway and teeter in a wind storm, and it looked like it was going to fall on my house. Seeing this, I run inside my house, call the president of the United States, and quickly convince him to make a new law that says: “It is henceforth forbidden that any tree fall on the house of Jason Henderson.” The President then emails me a copy of this good, new law. I print it out, run outside and hold it up right next to the tree, and think to myself, “Phew that was a close call!” But after just a few minutes, the wind picks up again, and the tree (ignoring my good and just law), makes a loud crack, falls, and completely crushes my house. 

This is a silly analogy, but maybe you see my point. The law of gravity is stronger than a written law forbidding gravity to work. It was a good law, but it was weak because of gravity. It was unprofitable because it couldn’t save my house. 

In Hebrews 10:1 we read: “For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.”

The written law was like a shadow of the law of life, the law that God wanted to restore to man. Again, it was a good description of righteousness, but not the life of righteousness. It manifested evil things, and pointed to better things, but in and of itself it had no power to give what it described. And this is precisely what Paul says in his letter to the Galatians. 

Galatians 3:21 Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.

In the beginning, man lost the law of God’s life. And when he lost that law, he began to live in and by another law, the law of sin and death. God, in His kindness, and with an eye towards man’s redemption, gave to Israel a written law of commandments and ordinances, and set this law over His people as a light and a standard of righteousness. And He did this for a few principal purposes: 1) So that the written law would uncover, manifest, and condemn the law of sin that worked in the heart of man. There are many Scriptures that plainly declare this. 2) That, by creating rules and standards of righteousness, ordinances of worship, precepts of clean and unclean, etc.,  God would keep the bearers of His testimony from sinking even further into vile corruption that had overspread the surrounding nations. And 3) that by both of these first two things—I mean, both the manifestation of the nature of sin, and the various rules, ordinances, ceremonies, types and shadows of the law—he could point the heart of man to the Seed of life, the birth of a heavenly nature, that would bring man back under the law of God’s life that was lost in the fall.  

And when I say that the law points to Christ the Seed, I am not only referring to His outward coming as a Man in the incarnation. Of course this is true as well. The law pointed to the outward coming of Christ in multitudes of ways, and this is extremely important. But the working of the law IN man, also points us to our need of experiencing Christ the Seed in us, as the actual coming, the true fulfilling of all that was testified of and described by the written law.