The Law of God is good, but it could never save anyone. It was never intended to do so. The law shows the distance that exists between God and man. The primary purpose of the law was to reveal to the sinner his or her inability to keep the law. As the law exposes the seriousness of sin, it should drive the sinner to despair. And this acknowledgment of sin, in turn, should lead the penitent sinner to receive forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The Jews misunderstood the role of the law. They thought they could earn favor with God by keeping it. They didn’t realize that they were under the curse of the law of God because they were sinners and the law could not change who they were.
Abram believed the LORD, and was made right with Him
The LORD calls Abraham to leave his country and follow Him
Abraham plays an important role in the Christian faith. He is one of the most important figures in the Bible apart from Jesus. It is through his genealogical line that the Savior of the world comes. (See Matthew 1:1-2 and Luke Luke 3:34.) The story of redemption begins with God’s call to this patriarch. He was the first man chosen by God for a role in the plan of salvation. The story of Abraham contains the first mention in the Bible of God’s righteousness credited to man as the only way of salvation (Genesis 15:6). God chose Abraham to be the father of many nations, just because it was His will to do so.
Abraham’s name was Abram before God entered into a covenant with him. Abram was a pagan who was born in the city of Ur of the Chaldees. After one of his brothers died, Abraham and his wife, Sarai, his father Terah, and other family members moved from Ur to Haran. And when Abram was seventy-five years old, The LORD said to him, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go the land I will show you.” The LORD promised that He would make him into a great nation, make his name great, and that all peoples on earth would blessed through him (Genesis 12:1-3). So Abram did as he was told to do and set out for the land of Canaan.
God promises Abraham great blessings and Abraham believes God
Sometime later, the LORD came to Abram in a vision and told him, “I am your shield, your very great reward.” But Abram asked Him what He could give him since he remained childless. His servant stands to inherit his estate. But the LORD answered, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He told Abram to look up to heaven and count the stars if he could. Then He said, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the LORD and he credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). The LORD confirmed his promise with a sure sign that what He promised, He would do. (See Genesis 15:8-20.)
Believing God is the way Abram, a sinner, was counted as being righteous before the Lord. And this is the way it will always be. The prophet Habakkuk states it so succinctly. He writes, “…the righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). In emphasizing the idea that righteousness by faith is for both Jews and Gentiles the apostle Paul writes, “For in the gospel a righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written, ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” This redemptive principle of being justified by God by faith is repeated many times throughout the New Testament.
The law of God was given to Israel through Moses
God gives his laws to Israel and commands them to carefully follow all of them
About 500 years after Abraham left Haran to go to Canaan, Moses led the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt through the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground. God led them through the desert to Mt. Sinai, where He gave Moses His Law for the people. The law included His moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law.
Moses told the people, “The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.” He then enumerated the great number of blessings that will come upon them if they obey the LORD their God (Deuteronomy 28:1-14). He also enumerated the great number of curses that would befall them if they do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees (Deuteronomy 15-68).
The nation of Israel is judged for its disobedience to the law
Over the course of time in the Old Testament, Israel would experience repeated cycles of obedience, which led to God’s blessings, and disobedience, which led to God’s promised judgments. Eventually, God uprooted them from the land they had inherited due to their disobedience. The northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria in 722 B.C. and the southern kingdom was conquered and exiled to Babylon in 586 B.C.
The Rabbinic tradition amplifies the law
Throughout the Old Testament, the Jews slowly learned the importance of obeying God’s commands and decrees. A group, know as the Pharisees, emerged shortly after the Maccabean Revolt (165-160 B.C.). Around this time, the Pharisees brought together scribes and laymen who believed in the importance and authority of the Oral Torah, which the Sadducees and ruling class dismissed as traditions of men, rather than the wisdom of God.
While the Pharisees affected Judaism in many positive ways, in the New Testament, their adherence to oral tradition is often portrayed as overly legalistic, and in some cases a means of circumventing the Law. By the time of Jesus and Paul’s ministry, the rabbis had summed up the Old Testament law into 613 commandments. There were 248 things you had to do and 365 things you were prohibited to do. It was indeed a yoke upon the neck of Israel “that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10).
The law was too burdensome for anyone to bear
But they knew the law, in its original giving, was divine since God had given them. And of course they believed that since God gave them, they needed to follow them. It was also important because Deuteronomy 27:26 says, “Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.” And Deuteronomy 28:15 drives the point home further by saying that if you don’t do all of this, you will be cursed. Now this is a heavy burden that no one can bear.
Yet, the Jews didn’t want to come by faith. They thought their self-righteousness could earn them their way. So, they hung onto their system of works righteousness and ignored the faith principle. And so they were all under a curse.
The futility of trying to earn God’s favor through the law
As a Jew, Paul understood that Deuteronomy was really saying. No one can perfectly keep all of God’s law. But that was what the religious leaders were trying to do. They believed that the way they would please God and make it to heaven was by meticulously following a long list of religious rules and regulations.
Not only did Paul know this would be impossible, he added that anyone who would try to win God’s approval by keeping the law, is under the curse of God. He wrote, “ For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law'” (Galatians 3:10). He goes on to say, “Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith'” (Galatians 3:11).
James made the same point in his epistle. He wrote, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). In other words, if you keep the law of God perfectly in every respect but make even the slightest mistake, it’s as if you broke every rule. Your guilty of it all and deserve God’s just condemnation.
The law leads us to Jesus Christ, who fulfilled the law for us
The question arises, why would God command us to keep the entire law that He knew we couldn’t keep? What good is the law? There are some things the law cannot do for us and there other things it can do. Let’s look at it from God’s perspective.
God’s law reveals sin
First, the law reveals how sinful we are by our inability to keep the law. The law has convicting power. It is God’s standard by which we are judged. The Jews had pushed the law to the external dimension and had reinterpreted it to accommodate their sinfulness. Before his conversion, Paul took great pride in his righteous zeal, but when he looked inside himself, all he saw was dung (Philippians 3:1-11).
The law was not just to be applied externally, but the law applied internally as well. Paul recognized it when he understood the tenth commandment against coveting (Romans 7:7). This law applies exclusively to the internal condition of man and prohibits coveting (lusting) or evil desires. Jesus spoke about the internal dimension of the law as well when He joined anger with one’s brother to breaking of the commandment not to murder and looking lustfully at a woman as committing adultery in one’s heart (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28).
You might be able to control your external behavior by means other than by grace, but the only way you’ll change the evil desire of your heart is by a transformation by God. By looking at the inside, you can begin to see the reality of sin that the law reveals.
God’s law rouses sin
Secondly, the law works in us to stir up even more sin. Until you’re really convicted, sin is dead in the sense that it doesn’t overwhelm you. But when the law of God comes in, and you really see what sin is, sin then rises to become some kind of monster that you see in your life. That’s when a person really comes to Christ, because they’re overwhelmed by their sin.
When someone sees the law of God for what it really is, then the forbidden thing becomes all the more desirable. For example, Paul explains his natural response to the tenth commandment not to covet. “For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting” (Romans 7:7-8).
Consequently, the law is good in respect to revealing the utter sinfulness of sin within the sinner’s nature. As long as sin doesn’t seem to be much of a problem, the desperate need for a savior will not be recognized.
The law puts our sense of self-righteousness to death
Thirdly, the law devastates and destroys us. It ruins the sinner. Everything seemed to be fine before the convicting power of the law exposes our sin for what it really is. But when the law becomes clear to us, all of our hopes and dreams, and everything we counted on are shattered and destroyed. Paul wrote about his own experience: “Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died” (Romans 7:9).
John Bunyan’s book, Pilgrim’s Progress, gives us a helpful analogy. The main character, Christian, is taken into Interpreter’s house. In this house is a large room (representing the heart) that’s full of dust (sin). A man (who represents the law) comes in with a broom and furiously goes about dusting the room. And, of course, the dust has no where to go, so the room fills itself with dust and nearly suffocates Christian. This is what God’s law does. That’s what the law is intended to do, so you see what a sinner you really are.
God’s law exposes the sinfulness of sin
Fourth, the law reflects the sinfulness of sin. We might think there is something wrong with the law if it brings us to despair, but God’s law is good, holy, just, and spiritual. Paul writes, “For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:11-12).
The law deceived Paul by promising God’s blessing if he would keep it, but showing him there was no way he could keep it when he tried to do so. So, the law’s good work can be seen by its power to drive us to despair and out of despair comes salvation. The law can’t save us. The law can’t sanctify us. But the law can convict us to lead us in desperation to Jesus Christ.
Believers are able to keep the law imperfectly through the power of the Holy Spirit
Genuine hope only comes after a sinner despairs in his own ability to do what God requires. When the sinner finds himself falling short, his proper response should be to cry out for God’s mercy.
Jesus told a parable about two men who prayed, a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee thanked God that he wasn’t like the other sinners. But the tax collector humbled himself. He wouldn’t even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Jesus made the point that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified by God. He said, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (See Luke 18:9-14.)
Once we come to believe that Jesus came to fulfill the law on our behalf, we’re clothed with His righteousness before God. We’re reconciled to Him, and the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. By His Spirit, our love for Jesus grows and we delight in pleasing Him by obeying His commandments.
We will not be without sin, but God will forgive us as we confess our sins. (See 1 John 1:8-10.) And as we follow Him, we become beneficiaries of the promised blessings for those who obey His commandments. What initially became a curse to us led us to Christ has now become the source of our blessing. Praise be to God!
There’s no room for self pride or boasting in oneself
The apostle Paul longed for the salvation of his people, the Jews. He wrote, “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Romans 10:1-4).
The hymn, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, captures the humble spirit of the Christian. He knows that through Jesus Christ, God has done everything needed to be reconciled to Him. We can add nothing of merit to our salvation. Meditate on the following lyrics from the hymn:
“Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfill thy law’s commands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and thou alone.
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace:
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Savior, or I die
Come to the wellspring of life
Ask yourself two very important questions. First, are you sure that you’ll go to heaven when you die? Secondly, are you certain why God should let you into heaven? If you don’t know for sure, you can settle that matter today. Visit my post, How to Begin Your Life Over Again and you’ll know where and how you’ll spend eternity.
If you’re ready to come just as you are to the cross of Christ, you can do that right now. Click here to learn more about taking your next step toward salvation.