To Encourage You

1 Timothy 1:9 “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient”

If you obey the speed limit 99 times out of 100, do those 99 “obediences” help you when an officer pulls you over for speeding?  If you’ve ever been stopped, have you ever used this defense: “Sir, I almost always don’t speed!”?  How far do you think that argument would help you in such a situation?  I would assume not very far at all.  However, that’s exactly how people often view the Law of God.  It’s the argument that goes something like this: “I think I’ll go to heaven because I’m a good person.”  By good, the thought is “I usually do good things, and I’m at least as good as the next guy.”  And while we know full well that we get no rewards or “brownie points” for obeying any man-made law, many people think that that’s the way it works with God.  However, as the verse above makes clear, the Law isn’t laid down for people who are just, but for those who are lawless and disobedient.  This means that the law of God was not given to “make” anyone good or just. No, it was given for just one purpose: to reveal the lawlessness and sin in the human heart.  

The truth is that we are all lawbreakers.   Like the rich young ruler who told Jesus he had kept the law for his entire life, Jesus exposed this lie by revealing that his money was an idol in his life and to love money is to hate God (Matthew 6:24) and violate the very first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3).  James speaks to the fallacy of the thinking of the rich young ruler with these words: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10).  In other words, any violation of any law of God ever in our entire lifetime makes us a lawbreaker, no matter if we’ve (and we have most definitely not) obeyed every other law fastidiously. 

But the problem is even deeper than this.  When we attempt to judge our obedience to the Law of God according to our own standards, we miss the mark because the sin in our hearts is so great that it makes our judgment about that sin very flawed.  In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 He addresses this problem over and over again. He repeatedly uses the words “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago . . .” and then He states what people thought the Law of God meant.  But then Jesus says, “But I say unto you . . . “ and then He explains God’s Law in a correct and fuller sense.

One example of this is the law prohibiting adultery. It’s the seventh commandment.  Many people think that this means that if they just don’t engage in an extramarital affair, they’ve at least kept that law.  But then Jesus explained, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). 

You see, God’s standard is very high and His righteousness is infinite in its purity.  For anyone to think that they can obey God enough by keeping His Law that they will merit eternal life reveals that they have no understanding of the nature of God’s Law at all.  No one will ever be justified by keeping God’s Law. The standard is too high, and we have missed the mark in countless ways. 

So, what’s the remedy?  Is there any hope?  Praise God there is, but only because of Jesus.  Jesus, the sinless and pure Lamb of God makes this incredible statement in Luke 22:37: “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors (i.e., the lawbreakers).’”  Here Jesus points to the fact that the reason He came to earth was to bear all the lawbreaking of mankind and pay the penalty for that lawlessness through His death on the cross.  And the Scriptures also say, “For our sake he (i.e., God the Father) made him (i.e., God the Son) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

What an awesome truth, and what an incredible gift is the sacrifice of the sinless One for us in our otherwise hopeless condition of violation after violation of the Law of God.  It’s all summed up in these words from Romans 3: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” 

May God give us a clear understanding of the purpose of the Law.  And may He keep us from the error of ever thinking that we will ever be justified before Him by adhering to something that was never given to make us righteous.  The Law’s sole purpose is to expose our sin.