“This monster of self-righteousness; this stiff-necked beast needs a big ax.  And that is what the Law is…a big ax!  Accordingly, the proper use and function of the law is to threaten until the conscience is scared stiff.” – Martin Luther

The outcome of church history would be forever changed in the 16^th Century by a man who for most of his young life struggled to find redemption and atonement through the religious practices of the Roman Catholic Church.  Because of his longing to find some peace of heart, he entered an Augustinian monastery, much to the disappointment of his father who wished for him to become a civil servant.

He determined that to ensure his acceptance by God, he would place himself under the most arduous of difficulties.  “He engaged in long vigils, he fasted, he cast off all the garments that decency would permit.  In after years, he believed he had permanently impaired his health by such rigors.  But never could he gain the assurance that even his utmost effort would avail to give him any standing in the eyes of God.”[1]

To find absolution for his sins, he fasted until his cheeks caved in; he confessed his sins for six hours every day.  Spent long hours in prayer, went on pilgrimages to Rome, “walked up the Pilate steps on his knees; kissing each step as he went along”, and when he reached to top, he remarked, “I wonder if it is so?”  It was even known that some monks saved his life one night when they found him naked in a snow bank just outside the door of the Monastery.  He did all of this for the purpose of gaining heaven.  Later, he would go on to describe this period of his life as one of “deep spiritual despair”.

And yet out of this horrendous time of slavery to his own religious self-effort, Martin Luther, who became the spark that lit the fires of the Protestant Reformation, discovered only unrelenting hopelessness at his own inability to keep the laws of God.

I think it could be said with more than a great deal of certainty that we human beings have been forever plagued by the idea that our meager contributions of goodness to the world around us are sufficient to justify ourselves before God; that if we try hard enough, we can somehow impress and appease God by what we do.

From Cain’s attempt to appease God with a sacrifice of fruits and vegetables; to Simon the magician’s attempt to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit from Peter, mankind has often assumed that salvation, atonement, or redemption are based upon a heavenly economic scale of barter; a quid pro quo arrangement between divinity and humanity.  Yet we find remarkably, as Luther did, that it simply doesn’t work that way.

The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, diffuses us of that notion altogether. In Old Testament history, we find again and again God giving his laws to man; and man, over and over, failing to measure up to God’s perfect standard of righteousness.  No matter where you look; in whatever age of human history, people continued to fail to meet the measure of the standard of righteousness demanded by the laws of God.

One can see this in Israel at the very outset of the inauguration of the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.  In Exodus 19:3-8, we find that Moses ascending the Holy Mountain to receive the Law of God and to enact the Mosaic Covenant between God and his people Israel.  From chapters 19 – 31, God outlines in detail the law with all its particulars, yet in chapter 32 the people waiting in the valley grow impatient because Moses is seemingly delayed in his coming.  Instead of being patient and trusting God, what do we find them doing?  Preparing to go back to Egypt having convinced Aaron to fashion for them a Golden Calf.

What is more than a little pathetic is that the ink wasn’t even dry, as it were, on the paper used to write the Law, before Israel is found violating it! 

If anything could teach us about man’s utter failure to keep the law, we ought to have learned by now from this bit of Old Testament history.  For what does it teach us?  That from the very “git-go”; right out of the gate, humanity has demonstrated its incurable penchant for failure when it comes to keeping the law.  Yet how extraordinary is it that we still think we can?   How fruitless and moronic the notion we have when we believe that we’ll succeed where others have failed if we just by determined self-effort and discipline train ourselves to do the right thing?  What is it that allows us to remain unconvinced?

Pride seems to be the answer!  Pride, and the rebellious nature of the human heart.

Because of these, we remain unconvinced!  And so reveal that our faith is misplaced.  To think we are keeping the law because we are found religiously and scrupulously attending to a spiritual list of external pietistic requirements is to secretly place our faith in ourselves.  Which then, naturally leads to legalism.

And behind legalism is the hidden belief that given enough time; with enough exertion of human effort, we’ll be the first to do what no one in history has been able to do.  

What a fool’s errand that is!  What a waste of life; time and energy!  Yet how difficult it is to convince anyone of how spurious it really is?

Some years ago, in a conversation at the school in which I was teaching, I posed this question to a young Catholic woman who was discussing all the things her family did during the Lenten season.  I asked her very respectfully, “Do you really believe that God cares what you give up for Lent?  Do you really think he cares whether or not you eat fish for a week, instead of beef?”  “I don’t know?”, she responded rather incredulously.  “I guess I never thought about it like that before.  This is just what we do in my family.  It’s a tradition.”

But how did such a tradition come into being?  Somewhere, at some point, someone thought that God was really impressed or honored by such requirements, and they passed those requirements on to the next generation until it became a tradition.  And once something becomes a tradition, people stop asking why, and simply, mindlessly continue what has been handed down to them!  In fact, with many traditions, one is never invited to ask why.  Asking why is seen as inappropriate, insubordinate and disrespectful behavior.  In families where tradition holds sway, younger generations learn very quickly never to question the traditions of their fathers, simply to senselessly obey them.

I didn’t pursue the matter further with this young woman.  My purpose was simply to provoke thought; to get her to think about what and why she did what she did religiously every year.  My point is, that human beings gravitate naturally toward legalist enslavement, especially if they think that God will somehow be impressed by it!

For, if you’ve ever lived in circles where legalism thrived; where rules and laws had become a long arduous journey of dotting “I’s” and crossing “t’s”; if you’ve ever lived in the shadowlands of dead joyless legalistic exertion, then you’ll appreciate the words of the Apostle Paul who wrote things that cause the legalistic dungeon we’ve been living in to flame with light.  The things he wrote allow the chains to fall and the heart to soar.

He wrote,

“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.”  ^{Romans 8:3}

 And…

“Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith.  Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”  ^{Galatians 3:23-25}

This as well…

“Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”    ^{Romans 10:4}

However one might understand these passages, one undeniable truth presents itself from each, the relationship between the Christian and the Law has forever changed, and it’s changed because of Jesus.  But in what way?

When Paul states that Christ is the “end of the law”, and when he encourages believers that they are “no longer under law, but under grace”, does this mean that the law has nothing to say to us today; did Jesus bring it to an end in the sense that God has in essence, erased the rulebook so that now we need not concern ourselves with right or wrong anymore?

Certainly, this is not what Paul advocated in any way.  In Romans 6:15-18, Paul argues that freedom from the Law is not the freedom to violate it, since living such a lawless lifestyle is not freedom at all, but slavery to sin.  And if you live in enslaved to sin, you ultimately prove that you are still under the law and will be justly condemned by it.  This is not grace.  Instead, he argues in Titus 2:11-12 that the very grace of God that has brought us salvation in the first place, is the grace that teaches us to live godly lives.  For the moral law of God is impregnated into the very fiber of our new life in Jesus, for this was what was promised when God first revealed the dynamics of the New Covenant in the Old Testament; a covenant Jesus would enact by his death and resurrection.  The Scripture says,

“’The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…I will put my laws in their minds and write it upon their hearts.’”  ^{Jeremiah 31:31, 33}

So, the life of grace expressed in the New Covenant of which we now enjoy through Jesus is not a lawless existence but is one whereby the laws of God through the power of the indwelling Spirit are written by God upon the redeemed hearts of those who by faith have found redemption through the cross.  The work of grace by the Spirit fills our hearts to desire to please God; to obey as an act of love in response to the loving-kindness of the Lord.  But is this the only thing that has changed?  Simply the location and the materials upon which the laws were written?

If Grace has not freed us from violating the Law, in what sense then are we no longer under the law?

Believers in Jesus have been freed from the Law in several ways:

We’ve been freed from keeping the Law as a means of Justification

The Apostle was very clear.   If people could be justified by keeping the Law then Jesus died for nothing.  By trying to keep the law we make the cross a spurious event in history. (See Galatians 2:20-21)

We’ve been freed from keeping the Law as it relates to Mosaic Legislation

The ceremonies and external requirements of the law have all found their fulfillment in Jesus, being shadows which pointed the worshipper to Jesus.   (See Colossians 2:16-17; Hebrews 10:1-4)

We’ve been freed from keeping the Law as a dynamic of Sanctification

Since the law was no help to us before salvation, nor even to obtain it, so the same can be said of its use in the Christian life, as a means of becoming more like Jesus.  Instead, Paul encourages us to live our lives by faith; in dependence upon the Spirit to produce godliness within us.  (See Galatians 3:1-5)

We’ve been freed from the Curse of the Law

The Law of God is an all or nothing proposition.  It’s not enough to keep most of the laws of God or only the parts that appeal to us.  To be under the Law, requires one to obey all of it, perfectly.  This, as you might guess, is impossible to do for sinful, totally depraved sinners like us.  Thus, whenever we sin; whenever we break the law, the law awakens to rightfully condemn us for our failure.

Without Jesus; with this condemnation left unchecked, would ultimately leave us writhing in agony for eternity in a place of torment.  And rightly so!  But God in his great love sent Jesus to assume this curse by becoming for a time the curse of God hung upon a tree.  As he died on the cross, Jesus assumed upon himself all of God’s wrath for our sins.

Through the redemptive act of salvation by faith, with Jesus having already become a curse for us and taken its penalty upon himself, the law’s demands are satisfied.  Thus, God is able to remain both just and the justifier of those who put their faith in Jesus.  As a consequence, as it relates to the law, it no longer has any power to condemn us since by virtue of our spiritual baptism into Christ, as far as the law is concerned, we’re already dead.  And just as the laws of men and nations no longer apply to those who are physically dead, so too, those of us who have been baptized into Jesus and have died with him, to us who live by the Spirit, the law no longer has any power to condemn. (Galatians 2:19-21; 3:10-14; Romans 6:1-11)

So I direct this question to my Christian friends who so adamantly claim that they are keeping the law as a way of life.  Why would you want to live under the law?  Why would you willfully place yourself back underneath its power once again?  Because with the law, comes a built-in curse, and the curse is this:  If you seek to keep the law, then you have to keep all of it; and if you cannot keep all of it, then you be condemned by the whole of it! 

There is no life there; there is no grace there, there is no hope there…simply the monster of self-righteousness; a dead-end street to nowhere; a road that does not lead to genuine righteousness; nor certainly, is it a road that leads to God.

If we doubt that, all we have to do is a bit of historical review.  Look again at the life of Martin Luther who would later remark, “If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them.”   Yet, the more he tried; the more condemned he felt…and the further away he found himself from his intended destination.

Look to the past dear reader!  If the great founders and reformers of the faith from ages past could not find redemption, or absolution or perfection or sanctification in the keeping of the law, what would make us think that we could?

There’s a better way to live!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century by Roland H. Bainton.   Copywrite 1952.  The Beacon Press:  Boston.  Page 29.