16 Learning From The Law
What does God want to teach us today from the Commandments? Some talk as if there is nothing for modern man to learn from them, but that is not so. Though more than 3,000 years old, this ancient piece of divine instruction is a revelation of God’s mind and heart for all time, just as is the nearly-2,000-years-old gospel, and its relevance to us is at least threefold.
First, the Commandments show what sort of people God wants us to be. From the list of prohibitions, telling us what actions God hates, we learn the behavior he wishes and loves to see. What does God in the law say “No!” to? Unfaithfulness and irreverence to himself, and dishonor and damage to our neighbor. And who is our neighbor? Jesus, asked that question, replied in effect, everyone we meet. So what does God want us to be? Persons free of these evils; persons who actively love the God who made them and their neighbors, whom he also made, every day of their lives; persons, in fact, just like Jesus, who was not only God’s eternal Son but also his perfect man. A tall order? Yes, but it should not cause surprise that our holy Creator requires us to reflect his moral glory. What else could possibly please him?
THREE USES
Rightly, Reformation theology did not separate God’s law from God himself, but thought of it personally and dynamically, as a word that God is continually publishing to the world through Scripture and conscience, and through which he works constantly in human lives. Spelling out this approach, Reformed theologians said that God’s law has three uses or functions: first, to maintain order in society; second, to convince us of sin and drive us to Christ for life; third, to spur us on in obedience, by means of its standards and its sanctions, all of which express God’s own nature. It is the third use that is in view here.
THE LAW OF NATURE
Second, the Commandments show what sort of lifestyle is truly natural for us. Rightly have theologians understood the Commandments as declaring “natural” law, the law of our nature. This phrase means that what is commanded not only corresponds to (though going beyond) the work of the law written, more or less fully, on every man’s conscience (see Romans 2:12ff.), but also outlines the only form of conduct that fully satisfies human nature. Deviations from it, even where unconscious, are inescapably unfulfilling. When people shy away from the formula “God first, others second, self last,” as if it were a recipe for total misery, they show that they do not understand themselves. Actually, this is the only formula that has ever brought true inward freedom and contentment on a lifelong basis to anyone, and we should be glad that Christ our Master leads his disciples so firmly back to it.
People ask whether God’s law binds all men or only believers. The answer is that it binds all—first, because God made us all; and second, because we are so made that without learning to obey the law we can never find the happiness and fulfillment for which we were made.
When people shy away from the formula "God
first, others second, self lost," as if it were a
recipe for total misery, they show that they do not
understand themselves. Actually, this is the only
formula that has ever brought true inward freedom
and contentment on a lifelong basis to anyone.
There is a paradox here, which it is best not to conceal but to parade. The fulfillment of which we speak here is known only from the inside, by those who taste and see; from the outside it regularly looks to us like its exact opposite. This reflects Satan’s success in persuading us, as once he persuaded Eve, that there is no fulfillment without unrestricted self-indulgence—one of the many optical illusions of the mind that he has spawned. But Jesus spoke parabolically of destroying one’s own hand, foot, or eye in order to enter into life (Mark 9:43–48) and literally of forgoing marriage for the kingdom’s sake (Matthew 19:12) and called all his followers to deny themselves—i.e., to be ready at his word to say “no” to anything and everything to which it would be most natural to say “yes.” Can this be fulfillment? Yes—because God uses our willed detachment to attach us to himself and fill us with himself, and that means life, light, and joy within. Christians jump into what felt to the probing toe like bitterly cold water and find it lovely. But the world cannot discern the optical illusion and remains skeptical.
KNOW YOURSELF
Third, the Commandments show what sort of people we are in God’s eyes—namely, lawbreakers under sentence, whose only hope lies in God’s forgiving mercy. When we measure our lives by God’s law, we find that self-justification and self-satisfaction are alike impossible, and we are plunged into self-despair. The producing of this effect is what the Reformers called the second use of the law. In Romans 7:7–20 Paul tells us from his own experience how it works. The law trains a searchlight on our motives and desires (Paul instances coveting) and makes us aware in ourselves of a lawless energy—you could almost call it an instinctual drive—causing forbidden motives and desires to keep bubbling up, “making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (verse 23). Thus the law, by exposing us to ourselves as spiritually sick and lost, enables us to appreciate the gospel remedy.
Let us love, and sing, and wonder;
Let us praise the Saviour’s name!
He has hushed the law’s loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame;
He has washed us with his blood,
He presents our souls to God!
Hallelujah!
FURTHER BIBLE STUDY
How the law exposes sin:
• Romans 3:9-20; 7:7-25
How the law spurs the saint:
• Psalm 119
QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
• How do you explain the abiding relevance of the Commandments?
• What is meant by saying that the Commandments declare "the law of our nature"?
• What do the Commandments tell you about yourself? What have you done about it, and what do you intend to do about it now?
And since they did not see fit
to acknowledge God,
God gave them up to a debased mind
to do what ought not to be done.
ROMANS l:28