What’s Law Got To Do With It?
Dear Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) once wrote that there are few things within the Christian life that are as frustratingly complex and difficult as understanding the rightful place of the Law in the life of the believer in Christ:
“There is perhaps no part of divinity [Christian doctrine] attended with so much intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines [theologians] do so much differ as stating the precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ” (From his Inquiry Concerning the Qualifications for Communion).
In other words, even a massive Christian intellect like Edwards struggled at times to understand the exact relationship between the Law of Moses and the Gospel of our Lord and Savior. This struggle for understanding has historically resulted in two extreme and disparate views of Law and Grace. Some believe that the Law of God has been totally abrogated in Christ to such a point that there is little, if any, use for it at all. The technical name for this view is antinomianism–or literally, ‘against-the-Law-ism.’ The antinomian is the person who essentially believes that Law and Grace are totally opposed and cannot possibly coexist, particularly in the experience of the Christian who has been saved by grace alone. They believe that the Christian life is all about grace, exclusively so, and that there are no commands (especially those in the Old Testament) relevant to and binding upon New Covenant believers.
The other side of that heterodox coin is, of course, legalism. The legalist is exclusively concerned with the Law, as if Grace does not exist and plays no part in our relationship with God. The legalist looks at God’s Law and sees within it a plan of redemption. He assumes that the righteousness that God requires comes by obedience, not by faith in Christ alone. And legalists are notorious for creating ‘homemade laws’ in addition to those recorded in Scripture just as the Pharisees did centuries before! At the end of the day, both the antinomian and the legalist make the same fatal error, that of interpreting the Law apart from its redemptive context–that is, apart from the One who is the telos, or termination point of the Law (see Romans 10:4).
So, if both of these extremes are far removed from the truth, what is the purpose (or purposes) for God’s Law? Are Law and Grace hopelessly opposed? Or, to put this another way, is the Covenant with Abraham (the Covenant of salvation and grace) somehow replaced by the Covenant with Moses (the Covenant of Law)? Has Law superseded Gospel? Were the Old Testament ‘saints’ saved by Law or by Gospel? And finally, why did God give and preserve His Law in the first place? What use is it to us today?
Well, these are the very important questions we will attempt to answer this coming Lord’s Day from the pages of Scripture. Our sermon text will be taken from Exodus 19:5-8.
Let’s join in prayer that our Lord’s blessed Word will be proclaimed in power and clarity, and that He will show us the beauty, simplicity, and abiding relevance of His Holy Law and the sweetness and power of the Gospel of our Lord and Savior.
I love you all so much,
Mike