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The Law of God
Doctrine … how relevant is doctrine? Is
Christian doctrine a subject best left to theological students and a special
breed of people who ‘want to explore the faith more deeply’. Even the word
doctrine sometimes turns Christians off. But doctrine is the
necessary foundation of our faith, - what you believe makes the type of
Christian you are. Someone has said, “The conduct of our lives is the true
mirror of our doctrine”. … Sound doctrine is something Paul stressed over
and over again (e.g. I Tim. 1:10; II Tim. 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1).
Indeed, doctrine makes demands. I like the
quotation from A.W. Tozer, “Christianity [i.e. doctrine] has been
watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would
not hurt anyone and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone! … The
unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to
cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological
wilderness.”
One of the subjects many Christians despise
is the doctrine of the law of God. They consider it as an old out-of-date
and obsolete issue that has no bearing on the believer today. The subject of
the law was addressed only to the Old Testament children of Israel;
it no longer applies today, because we as believers are not under the Law,
but under grace. Christ came to free us from the restraints of the Law and
give to us liberty.
… But “bathwater” and “baby”
come to mind here.
There is a term in theology
known as “antinomianism”; it is the idea
that
“members
of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the
laws
of
ethics
or
morality
as presented by religious authorities. Antinomianism is the polar opposite
of
legalism,
the notion that obedience to a code of religious law is necessary for
salvation”.
In other words, if it feels right for you, go ahead and do it … and God
won’t mind, for He has given you this spiritual ‘freedom’!
Three examples of
this stick out in my mind. The first one relates to a close charismatic
friend who influenced me in that direction when I was a teenager and
exploring these things. He sat with me one day and led me to believing I had
the ‘gift of tongues’ and he came across as particularly spiritual. He had a
great liking for a particular young girl … and the more I got to know him
the more open he became about how he would like the relationship to develop.
His language
became coarse and he told me that he planned to move in with her. “But
surely that would be a sin … what the Bible calls ‘fornication’?” No, he
replied, the ceremony of marriage is plainly and simply legal, he explained;
the ‘real’ marriage takes place in the eyes of God in the bed, - when the
two become one, - regardless of whether a ceremony takes place or not. You
see, he wasn’t under the law, but under his perception of what God’s grace
meant. (!)
Another example is
the one about the pastor from another country who didn’t believe in paying
his road tax … because he too was under grace and not under the law!
Another example …
on the Sunset Strip neighbourhood in San Francisco there were a group of
‘evangelical’ prostitutes. After committing the act with their ‘clients’
they witnessed to them. They felt that they could influence these people for
God in this, their type of ‘ministry’.
… And in the early
New Testament Church the antinomians tried to argue away the
rigidness of the Old Testament law because it was too restrictive and did
not belong to the freer, more open (as they saw it) dispensation of grace.
Grace and Law were in opposition, they said. As far as they were concerned,
they believed the New Testament Gospel taught that they were now under grace
alone … saved by grace, kept by grace … and therefore they had total
liberty/freedom in Christ (Gal. 2:4).
Yes, today we have
an explosion of antinomianism among many who claim to belong to
Christ. They resent the old-fashioned Biblical and Christian values and have
adopted the values of the world and they live their so-called profession
within these ungodly parameters.
Since they are not
under the law, they don’t have any necessity to uphold it. The Lord’s Day
has no special meaning; cohabitation is acceptable; doing the lottery
presents no problem, etc. etc. They are under grace, - they can’t lose their
salvation, - and free to do whatsoever they choose … now that they are
saved(!).
On the other side
of the argument were the Judaizers, Christians who mistakenly taught
that you had to become a Jew first and uphold the Jewish law. They were
‘tight’ in its observance and they basically made Christianity to look as if
it was another ‘department’ within the fold of Jewish life.
Today also we have
“Judaizers”, … people who lay down ‘laws’ that you must live by as a
Christian, or you lose your ‘Christianity’. These laws are often man-made
and so restrictive that they do damage to the concept of our liberty in
Christ.
Now, let’s
consider this subject of the Law of God carefully so that we don’t mismanage
it and fall into the hole along with the Judaizers, or be too lax and share
the “Vanity Fair” of the antinomians.
The Relevance of God’s Law
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God’s holy law
is relevant for all mankind. He makes no distinction between Jew and
Gentile, concerning their observance of it. |
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It comes as a
surprise to many that Adam and Eve were not Jews! Abraham, the father of
Israel had not been born; Moses had not brought the Commandments and the
Law to the Israelites … but yet God had already set out before our first
parents laws and regulations. |
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Even before the
Garden of Eden God had His laws that He judged by in Heaven; Peter wrote,
II Pet. 2:4 For if God
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. |
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Similarly in the
time of Noah, v.5 And spared
not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of
righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. |
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Sodom and
Gomorrah were equally responsible before God’s holy law; Peter wrote
again, v.6 turning the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an
overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live
ungodly; 7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation
[behaviour] of the wicked. |
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Yes, of course
God’s Law given to Moses condemned and prohibited sin in all its guises, -
e.g. Lev. 18:6-23, incest, polygamy,
adultery, child sacrifice, profaning the Lord’s Name, homosexuality,
bestiality, - but God’s Law even pre-dated the inscriptions of the tablets
of stone on Mount Sinai. |
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Even when the Law of
Moses was instituted, God’s word is unambiguous about the accountability
of the Gentiles to the Law: but
for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from
before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine
heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these
nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he
may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. (Deut. 9:4-5).
… |
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The very law which
God was revealing to Israel was the same law that also brought
divine punishment upon the outside nations for transgressing it. Israel
and the Gentiles were under the same moral law, and they both would suffer
the same penalty for the defilement which comes with violating
it. |
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God does not have
one law for the saved and another law for the unsaved! The unsaved are
equally responsible to keep the Lord’s Day, the Bible’s teaching on
marriage, the Bible’s teaching on honouring the Name of God and every
other teaching of the Word of God … just as the born-again believer is
too. |
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God is fair and just, and His Law is the
same for all! The relevance of the Law of God is to all mankind. |
The Reason for
God’s Law
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Where you don’t have law
you have disorder and chaos. Habakkuk,
1:4 the law is slacked, and judgment doth
never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore
wrong judgment proceedeth. |
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The reason for God’s law
is simple, - it is the maintenance of order. Douglas Macmillan said, “In
the Ten Commandments we have a transcript of the moral constitution of
Deity”. |
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Consequently, God’s Law
shows up sin, - for it is holy! Rom. 5:20 Moreover the law entered, that
the offence might abound.
There is nothing wrong with the Law of God; on the contrary, it shows up
to us our sin. If God, in grace, had not given to us His Law we wouldn’t
know that we were living contrary to His will. |
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Spurgeon told his
congregation, “The heart is like a dark cellar, full of lizards,
cockroaches, beetles, and all kinds of reptiles and insects, which in the
dark we see not, but the law takes down the shutters and lets in the
light, and so we see the evil. Thus sin becoming apparent by the law, it
is written the law makes the offence to abound.” It shows us how black
we are! |
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And then what
happens? … The Law mounts the judgement seat, puts on the black cap, and
pronounces, the wages of sin is
death! (Rom. 3:23) … Jn. 3:18 he that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God.
Absolute and utter powerlessness! |
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And also, … if the Law of
God was not prevalent over the laws of men we would be living in a state
of absolute and perpetual anarchy. |
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Not just a relatively
small number of homosexuals would be living in our towns, - they would be
in the majority. |
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The paedophiles would be in every town centre
and outside every school. |
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Marriage would be a thing
of the past and the central hub of society would be replaced by adulterous
and unfaithful co-habitings. |
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Financial fraud,
abortions, euthanasia would be more rife than they presently are. |
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If God’s law did not have
the pre-eminence in our world … our world would be unliveable! |
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Social order, … natural
order … The floods would overwhelm the land; the planets and stars would
collide; the mountains would crash into the sea, the sun would burn with a
heat that we could not manage … and the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the
natural disasters would be so many the news teams couldn’t keep up with it
all! |
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And then there are those
who teach that at the end times Christ will come back for His Church and
along with the Holy Spirit they will leave this earth … but the Bible
clearly teaches that if God was to abandon this world, this world could
not continue! |
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Yes, I know our government
is bent upon creating laws contrary to the Word of God … but they don’t
always get their way. |
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The European Union,
Islamic and communist governments, godless powers through this world are
out for the downfall of the principles of our faith and the law of God;
indeed we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places
(Eph. 6:12) …
but, said Jesus Christ, Mt.
16:18 I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. … Paul
again, Eph. 6:13 Wherefore take unto
you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and having done all, to stand. |
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The reason for God’s law
is the maintenance of order in His creation for His glory, laid out in
accordance of the Law of Almighty God. |
The Reward for Keeping God’s Law
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Now none of us would
presume to keep all of God’s law all of the time. We’ve all got to confess
we sometimes err and stray. |
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The Confession
says, “as the law forbids sin, it causes the regenerate to fight against
the evil inclinations to sin that they find in themselves. Furthermore,
the threatenings of the law are of value in showing the regenerate what
their sins deserve …”. |
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You see, it is impossible
to keep every letter of the law, - if our faith in Christ was to depend
only upon strict adherence to the law of God our salvation could not
last! We would ‘fall at the first hurdle’! |
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… Enter … grace!
By God’s grace He has lifted us out and in mercy and His good favour He
made us His own. |
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God knows our inability to
keep His Law so He sent His Son … so that we no longer depend upon the Law
to save us, but upon His Son. |
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We are saved through
grace, not through keeping the Law,
Eph. 2:8 it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. |
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But we need to be careful
also: the holiness of the Law that God instigated in the Old Testament was
not cast to the one side at Calvary; the holy Law continues to be the
expression of the holy character of the holy God, and our new standing in
Christ enables us to strive towards the faithful observance of His holy
Law. |
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The Law is not done away
with … but it is fulfilled in Christ. Yes, there are various aspects of
the Levitical laws that are no longer relevant to us (they were
specifically for the people of that age), but they have been perfectly
fulfilled in Christ! |
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Grace outdoes sin, for it
lifts us higher than the place from which we fell! … And the sentence of
the Law may be reversed, but grace can never be reversed!
Rom. 8 33 Who shall lay any thing to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. … 1 There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. |
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Through grace, the law of
God shows us our sin and our fallen state before Him, - what we deserve, -
and then He brings us to Himself; … law and grace working together. John
Flavel (17th century Puritan), “The Law sends us to Christ to
be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated”. Let’s
draw it all to a conclusion … |
Conclusion
… The
French Reformer and theologian, John Calvin, wrote, “Only if we walk in the
beauty of God’s law do we become sure of our adoption as children of the
Father”. You see, the Law of God is precious to the true
children of God.
The Law … even when it was
outside of our grasp, through grace God took the initiative and came and
worked it out for the benefit of our souls; Spurgeon explained it like this,
“The law is but
a schoolmaster, to bring thee to Christ”.
And here is a final
thought from William Secker (Puritan), “The law by which God rules us is as
dear to Him as the Gospel by which He saves us”. … As the Confession
says, “The aforementioned uses of the
law of God do not run contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but are most
happily in line with it, for the Spirit of Christ subdues the will of man
and enables it to do freely and with cheerfulness that which the will of
God, as revealed in the law, requires to be done”. |
