God’s moral law is based on His nature, it is a reflection of His character and thereby His righteousness and holiness. It is also a mirror to examine ourselves, in light of His nature and character. We must recognize that the law is not given to rob us of anything good, but rather given to us so that we would thrive. There is much beauty and sweetness in the law. It is meant to guide us toward righteous living and ultimately a deeper relationship with Him. It offers us a sense of security, purpose, and joy in following His principles, which He has graciously given us for our benefit. Think of how it is described for us in Psalm 119. “How blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of Yahweh. How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, they seek Him with all their heart. They also do not work unrighteousness; they walk in His ways. You have commanded us, to keep Your precepts diligently. Oh may my ways be established to keep Your statutes! Then I shall not be ashamed when I look upon all Your commandments. I shall give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, when I learn Your righteous judgments. I shall keep your statutes; do not forsake me utterly! Oh how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are mine forever. I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation. Iperceive more than the aged, because I have observed Your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep Your word. I have not turned aside from Your judgments, for You Yourself have taught me. How sweet is Your word to my taste! Sweeter than honey to my mouth! From Your precepts I get perception; therefore I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:1-8,97-104)
We live in an era where not much thought or attention is given to the law of God by both secular society and Christians alike. People assume this to be some sort of relic of the past, one that holds no relevance today. Due to this, we are living out, in all practicality, an antinomian heresy. It’s a sad situation when there is not much difference between the life of a believer and that of an unbeliever. We have been called to be salt and light to this lost and dying world. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16) This pattern of doing what is ethically considered the norm and essentially living as if God’s law was not still relevant today, only emerges in a society or church where God’s moral law is obscured. The very word “law” would appear to sound very unpleasant within our evangelical circles. It would seem as if people tend to think we’ve been redeemed from obedience to the law , as if the law is done away with, they would say it is now considered “Old Testament”, and our focus should be only upon the gospel, but is this the case?
How can the good news be shared without the bad news? How can we speak of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on behalf of sinful humanity before we speak of His law that shows us our need for Him? It is folly to try and share the good news apart from the bad. Like Ray Comfort says (and I’ll paraphrase this, as I can’t recall exactly how he words it), if you have a patient who is terminally ill, but the doctor does not reveal that news to him, but instead offers the cure (the medicine), why would the patient take the medicine if he thinks he is fine? On the other hand, if you reveal the deadly diagnosis to the patient, putting that mortal fear into him, he will desperately seek to take the medicine you offer. All this to say, if the law is done away with and our focus is merely on the gospel, why then does Paul, the one who diligently and faithfully proclaimed the gospel everywhere he went, and was eventually martyred for his faith, say the following pertaining to the law? “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were constrained, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! Rather, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law. For I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET.’ So the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,” (Romans 7:6-7,12,22)
If we are honest with our reading, it certainly seems Paul longed for the law of God as much as David. Simply put, the moral law of God should drive us to the foot of the cross, to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Allow me to go on a bit of a tangent that certainly pertains to this. The book of Proverbs is one area we can see the correlation of wisdom and the law. I would dare to say that every Proverb is rooted in the soil of God’s moral law. For the book of Proverbs confronts us with our morality and the fact that we are living in a moral word, both of which point us to the authority of God, and the fact that He is the ultimate source of morality. So, gathering from the book of Proverbs, the definition for a fool, this is not one who is dumb as people’s first tendency might think when they hear the word “fool”. Rather the fool is the one is one who denies the righteous requirements, righteousness and authority of God. A fool denies his own moral makeup and inherently the authority under which every human being is to live. The book of Proverbs magnifies the foolishness of sin in a way that is very interpersonal. If we work our way through Proverbs, ignoring the wisdom found therein, it’s not matter of being dumb or breaking some moral code; it boils down to rebellion against God. Hence why we get the following line in the opening of the book of Proverbs. “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge; ignorant fools despise wisdom and discipline.” (Proverbs 1:7)
What exactly is the fear of Yahweh? It’s not a life lived in terror of Him. Rather it is to be filled with a sense of awe at His holiness, His righteous authority, that in turn makes me want to submit to Him and His will. Foolishness then, according to the book of Proverbs, is presented to us as rebellion against God. Now this fits in perfectly with how the law is presented to us in God’s word. Thinking of the ten commandments, the first four point us to God being in His rightful place; it’s about the worship of Him, the rule of God over your heart, because if God is not in that place, you’ll have no hope of ever keeping the rest of the commands. We call this first set of commands the vertical view or sense of the law; as the last six point us to the horizontal, how we are to treat one another. When we consider the law, we ought to recognize three uses for it. First and foremost, it is a mirror. The law is meant to reflect the perfect righteousness of God. It reveals much to us about the character or nature of God. It also acts as means to illumine our sinfulness. It is when we look into this mirror, we find that we have not upheld a single one of these, having carried on in a life of sinful, willful, rebellion, and we are without hope of ever being reconciled to the God who created us, through any means in and of ourselves. It illumines our inability and weakness, and should drive us to seek the strength found in Christ. It is therefore the tutor or schoolmaster that brings us to Christ.
The second use of the law acts a restraint toward wickedness. Obviously, the law cannot, in and of itself, change men’s hearts. It does however serve as a means to protect the righteous from the wicked. We see this played out in a miniscule sense, but one nonetheless, of being carried out here on earth in judicial form, as judges exercise justice in a worldly sense. However, this will culminate in the final judgment being realized. The third and final use of the law is to reveal to us how to please God. Now please do not misunderstand me, we cannot merit God’s favor toward us through a seeking to uphold His law. The unregenerate heart can never adhere to the law, for the law provokes sin in us. “But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the Law sin is dead.” (Romans 7:8) With this final use of the law, it guides those who have been graciously granted faith from God, in how to please Him. Being born again, we see the Law in a new light, seeing it as sweet and beautiful, and through it, being enlightened as to how we can please our heavenly Father, whom we desire to serve. This love for the law is a sure sign of the divinely transformed life. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) It is something we love and delight in as God Himself delights in, being used as the instrument in which we seek to honor and glorify God. Let me take a stance here and say that the greatest benefit of the law for the believer is the revelatory nature of it. For it reveals to us the Law-Giver, informing us of what is pleasing to Him, as well as what offends and grieves Him. His moral law that He has graciously given us is ever binding upon us. And let us not think that our redemption is from obedience to the law, rather acknowledge that it is a redemption from the curse of the law.
If you have been born again, you’ve been justified, not because of your obedience to the law, but in order that you may obey it. Let us seek the law of God, study it, meditate upon it, find joy, beauty, and sweetness in it like so many before us. For if we love God we will obey His commands, so let us this day seek to be like David, a man after God’s own heart, through obedience, submission, and faith. So, as I relate this back to the magnificent book of Proverbs, we are never once told that it is God’s law that has the power to change or transform our hearts. It does, however, have the power to expose our hearts and the vile wickedness that resides within. It takes grace to rescue and change the heart. This is precisely why Jesus had to come. If the law could do for us what God has done for us in the person and work of His Son Jesus Christ, we would never have had any reason for Jesus to come. So, while the book of Proverbs magnifies the beauty of God’s law, it also reveals the limits of God’s law. If all we needed was the law of God, then the coming of Christ, His righteous life, His acceptable death, and His victorious resurrection would not have been necessary. Do not stop at the law, but let it drive you to the foot of the cross, where you will find mercy and grace through the Lord Jesus Christ.