The Law, Our Guardian (A Series on God’s Law – Part 3)

Have you ever heard the phrase, “laws are meant to be broken?” If you have, you will probably recall that it is often used by those who seek to justify something that they are about to do before they do it. In a strange way then, laws highlight our rebellious nature. As I mentioned previously, while laws are a reflection of the law-giver, our response to those laws reflects our hearts as law-receivers. That is, God’s law exposes the sinful hearts of sinful people. This makes our situation even worse, since we are not only guilty of breaking God’s law but also guilty of responding to it with spiteful and rebellious hearts.

To give an earthly example of this, several years ago I confronted my daughter about an act of deception that she purposefully performed against me and my wife. While I tried to ask probing questions in a calm and gentle manner, my daughter became increasingly agitated at our attempts to expose her sin. When we had reached what we thought was the end of the matter, we required our daughter to hand over her electronic device as a consequence for her actions. When my daughter responded by lashing out angrily toward us, her situation became worse and led to even further discipline.

This is just one example of many that I could share (and that I imagine you can relate to). I tell it to highlight an important point: the law reveals the heart of those to whom it is given. That is, while the law sets the standard for those who are under it – judging them accordingly – it also evokes a response. In the case of my daughter, she broke a law by being dishonest. That was the measurement by which she was initially disciplined. Yet her hostile and rebellious reaction to the consequences of her law-breaking revealed what she truly thought of the law. Like a surgical instrument, the law exposed what was happening underneath the surface.

Breaking the Law-Breakers

The function of parental law in the above story is very similar to how the Apostle Paul describes God’s law in his letter to the Church in Rome. There he states that “the law came in to increase the trespass.” He later goes on to say that he would not have known what it meant to covet unless the law had said “you shall not covet.” Yet even when he became aware of the commandment, his sinful nature seized the opportunity to produce in him “all kinds of covetousness.” Quite simply, God’s law evoked a response from Paul’s heart that revealed the man’s sinfulness. He, like everyone else, was already condemned as a sinner even before the commandment was given. The explicit giving of the commandment simply served to reveal Paul’s rebelliousness and condemn him even further.

Yet the law does more than just condemn and expose. It also captures and enslaves. This is something that Paul brings out in Romans 7 when he speaks about the law “as binding on a person.” Why is this the case? Well, Paul provided the answer a few chapters earlier in Romans 5:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14)

Here Paul points out that our connection to Adam is what brought condemnation and death upon us. He reinforces this point later in his letter by stating that “one trespass led to condemnation for all men.” And so, we, being represented by Adam, inherit what Adam bequeaths to us – a sinful nature and a death sentence. If we are in Adam’s bloodline, we are bound to this fate. The only way out of it, as Paul states in Romans 7, is for us to die…in Christ.

The Law Exposes, Not Fixes, Failure

So far, we have seen that the law of God not only condemns us for our inadequacy but also evokes a further sinful response from our rebellious hearts. It points out that we have dug ourselves into a pit that we cannot escape. Out of spite, we make it worse by digging a little deeper. Yet this is exactly where the law does its greatest work – it points to our need for rescue and redemption.

How does it do that? Well, the law demands that we perfectly obey God, not only by doing what he requires but also by avoiding what he condemns. And if we make one mistake, we are condemned. As James 2:10 declares, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” Therefore, to break one small part of the law is to become a lawbreaker. This is impossible to avoid given the fact that we have inherited a sinful nature from Adam. And even if we were not fallen in Adam, we would still be required to obey God perfectly from the moment we came into existence – or else immediate judgment would fall upon us.

Given our sad state, we are in desperate need of a savior. But can the law save us? While some might believe this to be possible, the very idea itself is nonsensical. If someone needs saving, it implies that they are in serious trouble. In our fallen condition, we are in trouble precisely because of the law’s demands. It would be odd, therefore, to suggest that the means of our condemnation would simultaneously be the means of our salvation. In other words, the law can only tell us what we are doing wrong or doing right. It cannot give us the power to actually maintain the standards or to fix what was broken. We either meet the standards, or we do not. And if we cannot meet and maintain them, there is no way to ‘make it up’ or ‘get extra credit’. Broken standards remain broken, even if they are broken only once.

Aside from that small point, the Scriptures are very clear that God’s law was never designed to save anyone. For instance, in Hebrews 7:19 the author explicitly says that “the law made nothing perfect.” And yet we know that perfection is exactly what God requires! Later in the letter, the author tells us the reason why the law cannot make us perfect: it cannot purify the conscience (i.e., change the heart). This is also confirmed by the Apostle Peter in his first epistle.

Conclusion

In both Peter’s first epistle and the letter to the Hebrews, the answer to the law’s weakness is Christ. It is Christ who purifies our conscience and makes us perfect. He can do this because only he can satisfy the payment of debt that is demanded by the law. The Apostle Paul states this clearly in his letter to the Colossians when he declares that, because of Christ’s sacrifice, God made us alive by “canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.”

The primary purpose of the law, therefore, is to point us to Christ. The law does not point to itself as the savior, as if we could earn God’s favor and pay off our debt to him. Rather, it points us to Christ as the only true savior, because Christ is the one man who truly fulfilled the requirements of the law. This is why Paul can describe the law as “our guardian” or schoolmaster until Christ came, “in order that we might be justified by faith.” Consider the significance of that last part. Why was the law guarding us until Christ? So that we would be justified, or declared righteous, “by faith.” The whole point, therefore, is that God would be glorified in saving His people from their sins apart from any effort or good works of their own.

[Note: This article was originally published on Eric Luppold’s Substack page. It is reproduced here with permission.]