The Purpose of The Law

One of the key issues that divides Christians today is the question of nomianism: are Christians bound to follow a law of God?  Such a law could be the 10 Commandments, what is called the New Testament law of Christ, or some other law.  Certainly all Christians (with a few exceptions) teach that the Jewish ceremonial laws, those laid out, for instance, in Leviticus, are no longer binding.  However, when it gets beyond this point, there is disagreement.  One of the key reasons that antinomians, those who reject any laws as binding on Christians, hold their view is St. Paul’s teaching in Romans that Christians are dead to the law (7:4) and that Christ is the “end of the law.” (10:4)

 

Of course, all Christians would say that certain things are sinful and wrong.  Murder is clearly a sin, and no Christian would teach otherwise.  However, the difference of opinion is over whether the prohibition against murder is one of divine Law for Christians, and whether the act of murder, or any other sin, would have any bearing on a Christian’s salvation.  Many Christians would say that it would not. Some would teach that once one has Christ in his life, his is bound to no law at all.  Others would teach that the Christian who sins does break God’s law, but is not accountable thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  In either case, a Christian would not be able to forfeit salvation through the act of murder or through any other act.  It is important to point out that this teaching is not one which is indifferent to sin.  An important factor in the teaching is that a person who has truly accepted Christ will not want to murder.  Opinions differ as to whether it is possible for a true Christian to murder, but at its most basic level the teaching would hold that even were a Christian to falter, he would not forsake salvation. 

 

Some Christians teach that there is a law in effect for them which they call the Law of Christ, or the new law.  It is based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ in the gospel.  He gave many instructions in the pages of the New Testament, and whereas others would say that they represent the way a Christian ought to live or the way that is best for a Christian to live, this group considers them required for Christians.  Defenders of this viewpoint turn to passages such as Matthew 19:16-19, in which Christ points to the 10 Commandments as being necessary for salvation. 

 

The confusion surrounding these points stems not so much from a difficulty with the New Testament texts, but rather a general misunderstanding of God’s laws themselves.  Examining this question is the key to understanding the role of law in the life of a Christian.  Take, once again, the example of murder.  Often, it is said that killing is wrong because God declared it to be, such as in the 10 Commandments.  Similarly, stealing is considered wrong because God said that it is.  This is all quite true.  Disobeying God is wrong, and thus if God declares that killing is wrong it is.  The mere fact that the 10 commandments prohibit killing does make it a matter of sin.  However, the matter is not as simple as it may first seem.  Consider the example of a Jew living in the time of David.  This Jew would be bound to the 10 commandments and all of the other pieces of the Mosaic Law.  If he killed, was it wrong merely because he was disobeying God?  If there had been no such law, would this Jew be innocent of sin?

 

To answer the question, one need only consider Cain. He lived long before any law had been given.  In fact, Scripture does not record God prohibiting murder until after Cain had killed Abel.  The first such instance is in Genesis 9:6, when God delivers the Noahide laws to Noah after the subsiding of the flood.  Nevertheless, Cain sinned in killing Abel.  Even without the law, this act was still wrong.  It is also true that many acts, such as homosexuality, were punished by God for their sinfulness in the book of Genesis, even though all of the events therein occurred before they were first prohibited by the Law of Moses.  The truth that is found in the Scriptures is that some acts are intrinsically, naturally wrong.  That is, in part, where the term ‘natural law’ derives from.  Natural law is not a code of laws, but is simply that set of moral principles that are true by nature. 

 

To understand this further, it is helpful to consider the progression of mankind’s understanding of evil.  When Adam and Eve were created, they were created without the knowledge of evil.  They could not kill one another because they did not understand that such a thing as murder existed.  Imagine a 5 year old boy.  A 5 year old boy cannot have sex because, aside from his physical incapability, he does not even know that such a thing exists.  Similarly, Adam and Eve did not know evil.  When God commanded them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17), this command was not difficult for them.  They were not even aware of the possibility of disobedience, as it is an evil.  The serpent put into their minds that such a thing could be done.  He tricked them into eating the tree in part by simply making them aware that it was possible.  It is when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they gained the general knowledge that evil existed.  This is the reason that the serpent said that they would be "like gods," if they ate of it.  Clearly they did not become gods themselves.  However, they did come to a knowledge of evil, a knowledge possessed by God.  In knowing something God knew, they did become “like God,” though not in the way that they may have envisioned it.

 

Because of this original sin, people now possessed both the knowledge of evil things and the knowledge of good things.  These people did have a general understanding of what was right and what was wrong.  This is evident by Cain’s attempt to hide the murder of his brother (Gen 4:9); he knew that it was wrong to kill Abel. It is also evident by Cain’s murder that, though people knew what was right and wrong, they were not able to control themselves to do good.  This is made even clearer in that mankind had become so corrupt by the time of Noah (Gen 6:5) that God chose to destroy all but one family.  There was a fallen, corrupt nature to men as a result of the fall, a nature that tended people to sin rather than to follow good (cf. Romans 7:14-25)   

 

This is important because God created souls for the purpose of knowing Him.  Jesus makes this clear throughout the gospels.  He more than once uses the terminology of “knowing God” to describe having a relationship in Him.  When describing the judgment, He says that those who were to be damned were never known by God (Matt 7:23).  In fact, in John 17:3, He even defines eternal life as knowing God.  In God's original creation, Adam and Eve knew God in a way which people today do not.  They spoke with Him, and He even “walked” with them (Gen 3:8).  When Enoch, one of the righteous men of the book of Genesis, is taken to Heaven by God, He is said to “walk with God.” (Gen 5:22-24)  Adam and Eve, in knowing God, were created with their souls being what God intended human souls to be.  By committing their sin, they were cast out of the garden and of God’s presence (Gen 3:24).  Through this sin, all people are born outside of God’s presence, outside of the garden.

 

A person can move his or her soul in two directions in life.  It can grow closer to God's original "intent" of knowing Him, or it can grow further away.  This leads to a greater understanding of what sin is.  The original sin of Adam and Eve was an act which separated them from God.  It was an act by which they were expelled from His presence, and by which they were deprived of God’s intent for their souls of knowing Him.  By its nature, eating of the tree led to this.  It was not simply because God forbade eating of it that this effect occurred.  The nature of this sin was to come to know evil, and by knowing evil, Adam and Eve could not know God, for He is the antithesis of evil.  John wrote, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8)  Jesus taught that those who love God obey Him (John 14:15).  The sin of disobedience which Adam and Eve committed was by its very nature a failure to love, and by its very nature a failure to know God.  In this original sin it is illustrated that what makes an act a sinful is that it is in its nature an act which moves a soul further from God's original intent of knowing Him.  Thus, killing is sin because through the act of killing, a soul moves further away from knowing God.  By its very nature, it is a failure to love and thus a failure to know God.  This is why Christ taught that all of the commandments are summed up simply by the commandments of loving God and loving neighbor (Matt 22:36-40)  What makes an act good is that by its nature it brings a person to love more and to know God, which is His original plan for people’s souls.  Prayer, for instance, by its very nature helps a person to know God.

   

Through this key the entire purpose of the law is understood.  Throughout the times of Genesis, souls were moving away from God's original intent because of the sin that was being committed in those times.  With each sin, people drew further and further away from knowing God.  Therefore, God provided the law to aid people.  This is why God’s first act at the end of the flood was to give the Noahide law.  Since the creation of the world, mankind had fallen further and further away from Him by committing loveless act after loveless act, and thereby knowing Him less and less.  These acts were sinful all along, as has been explained above.  The law was given as a guide, to aid this new generation of mankind in doing those acts which were loving and in avoiding those acts which were loveless; it was given to teach man how to know God so that the same disaster would not happen as had before.  St. Paul explains this in Romans, where he writes, “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.” (5:13)  He does not mean that sin is not counted by God where there is no law, because God was counting the sin.  Men died because God counted the sin, and God flooded the earth because He counted the sin.  St. Paul’s point is that people do not count sin without a law.  God gave the law so that sin would be counted by mankind, and that people would, counting it, avoid it. 

 

The purpose of the law was, as St. Paul explains in Romans, not to cause acts to be sinful or to be good by defining them as such, but to indicate and to emphasize what was sinful and what was good.  It was given as a means to guide people so that they might recognize sin – those loveless acts which would hurt their souls - and to therefore avoid doing them.  He writes in Romans 7:7, “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."  In Romans 2:20, he teaches that the law is “the embodiment of knowledge and truth.”  It was given as a codification of this knowledge and this truth so that mankind might know sin and avoid sin.  Imagine a government's laws.  All people realize the moral principle that stealing is wrong.  However, a state's laws against it act as a guide and an emphasis to follow that moral principle.  If there were no written law about it, many more people would steal.  Even though they would know it was wrong, they would steal anyways because there would be no consequence.  The law brings consequence, and brings motivation to obey.  The Israelites knew had a general understanding of what was wrong, however they had difficulty avoiding it.  God's law provided a similar motivation as state laws today. 

 

Despite this positive design, the law was inadequate.  Even with it, people could still not draw closer to God.  There were two problems with the law.  One is that it acted as an encouragement to sin in the same way that a parent’s rules act as an encouragement for children to break them.  St. Paul writes that sin seized an opportunity in the law (Romans 7:8).  “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me,” he laments.  In mankind’s fallen nature, the commandment against an act only makes it more tempting.  Because of this, the law could not draw people closer to God.   “For while we were living in the flesh,” St. Paul writes, “our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” (Romans 7:5)  The other problem with the law is that is made good acts a matter of obligation, not a matter of love.  To know God is to love God, yet to follow a law out of a sense of obligation is not to love God.  If it were possible for a person to follow the law out of love for God, this would have been different.  However, the hearts of mankind could follow the law only out of obligation. 

 

This is where Christ, who came to give to men new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26-28), enters into the picture.   Concerning the law, He said that He came not to abolish it, but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17).  It is by accomplishing its purpose, by bringing people to love and thus to know God, that He fulfills the law.  He gives people new hearts, replacing their hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.  The law is written on these new hearts.  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts,” the Lord said through Jeremiah (Jer 31:33).  In this, He gives people hearts to know His law, but He also does more.  He also gives what Catholics call Sanctifying Grace, which makes souls capable of loving and of knowing God.  Without Christ’s grace, no person can love God, but can only follow rules.  Once a person can love God, that person can grow to know Him more and more, to fulfill His original design more and more to the point where once again he or she actually dwells with God in Heaven. 

 

Through Christ’s grace, people can also seek to free their souls from any attachment to doing sinful things.  They can seek to be free of even the desire to sin.  Any attachment to sin is a hindrance to knowing God, because God is completely without sin.  If a person is attached to any sin, that person cannot love God completely because He has no sin, and a person who wants sin cannot be happy with or love He which has none.  Christ gives new hearts that are offended at sin as He is, so that people may become a law to themselves. This is what St. Paul writes that those who follow the commands of the law even without hearing it are (Romans 2:14).  With the law that was given to the Jews, most did not obey, and even those who obeyed did so out of obligation.  There was no love of God in that, and so nobody could know God through that, and so nobody could be saved through the law. 

 

With new hearts, hearts with the law written upon them, there is no need for an external law.  The external law could not save anyways.  The internal “law” that is written on people’s hearts can save, because the law is a part of their hearts.  Christians follow the commandments of this law out of love, not obligation.  They follow it out of their very hearts, because it is a part of who they are.  When St. Paul writes that Christians are dead to the law, he means that people are not bound to the law.  With any law comes punishment for breaking it, and in the past people would be condemned by the law for their transgressions. Now dead to the law, it does not condemn Christians any more.  However, just like murder was a sin before the law, it still is.  It was loveless then, and it is loveless now, and one cannot know God and commit loveless acts, for God is love.  Just as Adam, Eve, Cain, and all those living before the flood suffered the consequences for sin, so do Christians today. 

 

Though there is no law to condemn, Christians must live morally if they wish to seek God, because immoral acts are loveless, and to do them is to love God less and less, and to know Him less and less.  When St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that, "all things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial," (6:12) this is what he is talking about.  All things are lawful, as there is no law to be broken.  However, sin is still sin, it is still loveless, and it is still impossible to sin and to know God.  There is no law to condemn, so all is lawful, but not all things are beneficial because some things will lead a person from knowing God.  The context illustrates this further, because St. Paul’s statement in verse 12 is given to defend, against the charge that all things are lawful, his teaching in verse 9 that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.”   Indeed, he says that, “neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (9-10)  There is no law against these things, but those who practice them shall not inherit the kingdom of God because they are loveless acts, acts which are lawful but not beneficial.  

 

People are "bound" by these moral principles only if they wish to know God.  The reason that there is such an emphasis on the 10 Commandments is because they are a beautiful summary of the law that is written upon each Christian’s heart.  The dietary laws and the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were intended only to teach the Israelites self control and obedience, matters which are now a part of the heart of every Christian.  To violate these laws is meaningless, because they are no longer binding.  They are not matters of loving God or knowing God.  The 10 Commandments summarize those points which are written on people’s hearts.  They are still a guide, a guide which is embraced because it can shine forth the light when people are blinded by sin to that which has been written on their hearts by their most precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

 

God Bless,

 

 

Shane Coombs 2006