Hi there Larni. I wasn’t sure if you were continuing with this. I’m away from EvC but will pop by for this if your posting to it. A bit of a long post coming up but since Paul is going to be going to be dealing with aspects of the law chapters 6 and 7 a bit of a root around might be good by way of preparation for us both.
So the Law is there to show us what we (are) doing wrong, even though we can never live up to the Law.
To do a rough recap. We have seen 3 central points that Paul has made so far.
1) Every man is sinner and Gods condemnation and wrath is upon him because his sin.
2) Attempting to ”get right’ with God through trying to obey the law will not solve the problem of mans lawbreaking. I say ”try’ because no man can keep all the law.
3) What it is that
does solve the problem of a mans sin (or unrighteousness) is believing what God says. This believing God results in God crediting righteous to a mans account (legally: Christ pays for the sin and his ”paid in full’ receipt is credited to the man by God)
In Romans 5 Paul is going to talk some more about this way of salvation being a sure way of salvation - that a person justified by (by means of or through the medium of) faith is guaranteed to spend eternity with God and all the rest that goes with salvation. Paul will continue on this ”assurance of salvation’ theme in chapter 8 but will first insert a parentheses into his train of argument (by means of chapters 6 and 7) in order to deal with, amongst other things, the law. His reason for doing so is that he must address some of the questions and objections that can be expected to arise in the mind of a person who has been told the astounding things above. And they are astounding things - especially the completely counter-intuitive notion that being good/moral/law-adhering doesn’t count one iota with God in terms of it gaining a man his salvation.
But regarding what you say above. And I mean this in the context of the laws function in so far as it pertains to a non-Christian/unsaved/unjustified/legally unrighteous person. The law applies differently to a Christian/saved/justified/legally righteous person - and we should not confuse the two categories of people.
So the Law is there to show us what we (are) doing wrong, even though we can never live up to the Law.
Nearly, but not quite tight enough. If the law was there to show us
what we were doing wrong then the tendency might well be to try not to do wrong. We would tend to extract out that the law is to operate as a moral guide. We must move back a slight step to something far more . er . fundamental. The law is there to show us that we do wrong in the first place.
That’s where we need to halt. We should not (but do) bypass that fact, accept it and carry on to investigate and be concerned with the
what we are doing wrong and how we may avoid doing wrong. We’ve gone too far. What is important is not ”what we are doing’ but ”that we are doing’ in other words. Furthermore: it's not "doing wrong" but "doing wrong in the sight of God" an important distinguishment that gets forgotten about in the clamour to obey the law.
It makes no difference whether the man is an atheist or a religious. The case of the atheist is obvious enough. Patently he must be convinced. But so too must the religious. The religious might see that he does do wrong in the sight of God. He accepts that. But he is a man only partially convinced by the law. He is not convinced that this alone (his doing wrong) condemns him. He is not convinced that there is no need to progress further in his wonderings about his eternal fate. He is already condemned and should halt right where he is. But he doesn’t halt. He skips on to get to thinking about how
he can resolve this problem. That by his trying to obey the law he can somehow redeem himself. Paul has demolished that notion. And the law, enabled by mans own lawbreaking, will seek to drive the words of Jesus and all the others into a mans heart. Witness the rich young ruler as he approaches Jesus in Luke 18. It would be worth reading the complete story but I’ll just put up the key verse here. Notice the starting precept of the rich young ruler:
quote:
18A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
“What must I do?” “How do I redeem myself?” “How do I earn righteousness?” All the same thing. He did much good, this man, but Jesus knows that no one can follow his commands so poses one for the rich young ruler in order to illustrate the very thing that Paul has been explaining. “Give up your false god: the love of money, comfort and luxury and influence” Jesus told him in effect “and come follow me” The rich young ruler couldn’t comply and so failed the first of Jesus two golden rules: love God with all your heart soul and mind.
“By the deeds of the law shall no man be seen as righteous in his sight” said Paul early on in Romans. For the simple reason that no man, rich young ruler or otherwise, can follow all the deeds of the law. Everyman has his own personal stumbling block.
The religious man ignores this first principle and ploughs on. Recnognising his sin he denies his automatic condemnation and seeks refuge in “I am trying to do better”. But the law continues to press at him at every turn. And when that man inevitably stumbles the law cries “Lawbreaker, lawbreaker, lawbreaker” at him. “I must try harder and harder” says the religious man in response - refusing the conviction the law is trying to lay on him. That’s all ”trying to obey the law’ is, Larni: an ongoing rejection of the true message of the law which tries to get a mans attention and tell him that he is already condemned and that every transgression only adds to his condemnation. Getting it right sometimes doesn’t deal with having gotten it wrong so many other times. It’s a message the religious man refuses to listen to because the consequences of accepting that message are so terrifying he finds he cannot accept it. He is literally sticking his head in the sand. What he is not doing is considering the good news - he has missed it completely. The good news is telling this man that on the day he relents and accepts his hopeless condition before God he will find God holding out that which he desperately seeks to earn himself but cannot. Righteousness - offered by God to man - as a gift. Its sitting there waiting for him and the only thing stopping him having it is his own refusal to have it.
It seems to me that God is; and that is definitial for the state of the universe.
Not quite sure what you mean here. But I take this from it in relation to law.
A wrong take on the purpose of the law tends to get man focused on the law and what the law is apparently trying to achieve. The law as a moral guide. Take “keep off the grass”. That’s a law and that laws apparent purpose is force people into not damaging the grass. And people find that they have varying views on this. Some won’t give a monkeys and will trek across the grass. Others obey the sign fearing retribution or feeling it goes against their moral code. Each has a subjective take on the law. But what lies behind that law is the motivation of the person who put up the sign in the first place. Not their retribution nor the putting up of the sign but the original motivation right back at the start. Their original goal is for the grass to frame a lovely flowerbed they placed in the middle and they intend that all should enjoy the whole thing as it is designed to be enjoyed: to simply view it. The goal is not that others come along and spoil what is intended by having picnics on it or letting their dogs crap on it and in so doing ruining it all for all. The person who put the sign up didn’t and doesn’t want the sign there, they want a situation where all people appreciate the arrangement in the only way it can be appreciated without it being destroyed. As it was designed to be appreciated. The law is a later thing - not the original desire or motivation of the originator.
God is . perfect. Everything as he intends it can be enjoyed in one way only. As he designed it to be enjoyed. We think we can do better and for a while it seems that we get away with it. But we find that our letting our dog crap on the grass ruins our next picnic - whose left-behind food remnants soils our shoes the next time we take a stroll on the grass. Our deciding to pluck some flowers from the flowerbed for a nice (but temporary) arrangement back home reduces the visual pleasure we and everyone else gets next time we/they are passing. Man wanting to do things his way only and ever mucks things up.
God is indeed definitional. His way is the only way it works. And he is trying to get us to see that. And to bring us to the point where we will let him alter us so that we too see the sense (not the condemnation) behind the sign “keep off the grass”. For when we do see it finally there will be no more need of the sign. And that place is called heaven. There are no laws in heaven for there will be no need of laws. All there will be is people who have been once convinced that Gods way is the best way. The only way. And having been once convinced God promises to do the work necessary in order for that person to be fit for heaven - where all they have to do is enjoy what he has laid out for them.
Without the Law (as an illuminating factor), we would have no idea as to the nature of our transgression (our very existence).
Without the law to illuminate we would have no idea as to
our nature. Our nature being a desire and tendency towards sin as my cat’s nature is to bring in dead birds. As an aside: it wouldn’t be justice to punish my cat for bringing in dead birds - that’s her nature. Nor would it be just to punish us for that which we do according to a nature we were infected with. Not justice that is, were it not for something that my cat has no access to - a call of conscience. The call of conscience is the medium by which the law is enabled to illuminate our nature for us (and perhaps lead us to salvation). It happens to be the very same thing that makes us culpable for our sin and results in us being justly damned - should things go that way. Conscience, or rather the law (illumination) delivered to us via conscience, is a double edged sword.
Have a look at what Paul says in Romans 7 regarding the laws illumination.
quote:
7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.
Then it follows that the Law lets us say "I can never live up to that with out help, but I must recognize that I need (and then ask for) help from God."
The law finishes with us at a point (in the context of a person in an unsaved state I repeat). If it completes its God-directed mission successfully then it will deliver us off at a particular place. A point where we know that we are in real trouble. We might not be considering it to be Gods laws we are breaking at this point. Or even think of God as a solution. The law has completed its work when it has delivered us to the place of deep trouble - then it retires its work done.
In my own case the sense (IIRC) was just that I was, deep down, bad. And of realizing that there was no hope of me being good. And that this mattered to me - otherwise I wouldn’t have been troubled by it. The law had (this is me using 20/20 hindsight) convinced me there was something rotten at the core of me. It was whilst in this state that I picked up a small tract my mam had given me years before and which I had stuck in a bookcase. In it, I read that what I was undergoing was down to sin in fact - sin maintaining a separateness between me and God in which rotteness could flourish Rotten wasn’t occurring in a vacuum - there was a reason for it.
So when I prayed (from the heart) the prayer at the end of the tract it was not that I believed in God (for I had no hard evidence of God) but that if there was to be any solution to this then it could only occur if God existed. God would a) have to exist and b)resolve it (as the tract said he promises he will) - for there was no other possible avenue of escape. I (as does everyone else) tried to evade what the law is doing all the way down the line - I’d just run out of avenues of evasion. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians
quote:
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. ...
I tried to evade it but this is what it ended up doing for all that. It brought me to the place where there were no options except him. And I took the only option available. This was not a choice on my part because faced with only one option choice is not possible. A heartfelt confession was needed from me and the law didn’t make that confession for me. But it brought me to a place where I could make that confession . for want of any options. I could have rejected along the way. Refused to be brought. But this is the way God works to remove all the options so that he is left as the only one. He brings a person to the point where they are scraping the bottom of the barrel only to find him. He is meek - not proud.
Therefore (and correct me if I am wrong) following the Law is not the point. The point is that the Law is real and we can never live up to it. The subsequent transgression is taken by Jesus if we let him.
Pre-conversion following of the law is certainly not the point. You might be seeing that doing so is theoretically counter-productive because it works against that which the law is actually trying to achieve. A man who errs into being content as to his law following is further from being convinced than the man who is discontented because of his law breaking. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall inherit the earth”. Law following is Religion. The danger of Religion is that it brings religiosity and hypocrisy and self-satisfaction - anything but poorness of spirit. Religion occupies a number of lanes and the wide highway that leads to destruction. Little wonder the Bible attaches numerous health warnings to Religion
The law’s function will hopefully be clearer both theologically (“convincing us we are sinners”) and practically/experientially (“we don’t have to know the theological aspects in order for it to complete its task”). When delivered at Christ we WILL turn to him as our only hope - because we are hopeless otherwise. All past transgression and all subsequent transgression is dealt with by him. Post-conversion sin is another story. Paul will be dealing with the state of a believer in his relation to the law here in Romans too
How am I doing?
Pretty darn good. Don’t be put off by the length of the post. The essentials are in what you say but its good to pick them apart a little for clarity. Much of this will come in useful when dealing with Romans 6 and 7 anyway.
Later dude.
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