mattbraunlin
Member
The Law, the Sinner, and the Son
The Pentateuch (the first five Books of the Old Testament) contain many of the most beautiful and beloved stories ever told. They show God's interaction with his people on the most intimate level, from his step by step guidance of the patriarchs, to his liberation of his chosen people from the bondage of Egypt, to the miraculous sustenance with which he provides them during their forty year journey through the wilderness.But at the very cornerstone of the Pentateuch lies one of the most sobering and ominous revelations God ever gave humanity: the Levitical Law.
Often called the Mosaic Law or simply 'the Law,' this theocratic legal system was given by God to Moses and instituted as the absolute moral standard for the Jewish people. With one voice, the Jews vowed to uphold that Law.
And the rest of the Old Testament is essentially one continuous story of the breaking of that vow.
Over and over and beginning with the very first generation born in the Promised Land, Israel does what is evil in the sight of the Lord. They worship false Gods and embrace pagan practice, even sinking to such desperately evil levels as child-sacrifice. As such, there is a continuous cycle of redemption and punishment which permeates the Old Testament.
The Jews were God's chosen, and they were disgraceful failures in keeping the responsibility of upholding the Law they had been given.
However, I am now going to deconstruct this horrendous chain of events, from a human and Godly perspective, and explain why, however tragic it may have been, it simply had to happen.
If there is a justification for Israel's continual rebellion and desecration of God's Law, it is a very strong one: upholding the Law was impossible.
There were no fewer than six hundred and thirteen commandments contained in the Levitical Law. These commandments address, without exception or mercy, all the weaknesses, great and small, of men, women and children of every stripe, and were expected to be followed on an individual and societal level. It was, from the start, a lost cause.
And you'd best believe that God knew it. So why did he institute a legal system that was destined again and again to bring his own wrath upon his own chosen people?
The answer is found in the New Testament, but first let me see if I can make this situation make sense, in and of itself, from God's perspective. To do so, we must start at the very beginning.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had one commandment. Just one. Do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let's examine this a bit further, to see if we can even fathom how easy life with God was before Sin.
To obey God in the Garden, to bask for eternity in his favour, Adam and Eve literally did not have to do anything. There was not a single thought, word or deed required of them AT ALL. All they had to do was not do something. All they had to do was not eat the fruit of one tree (among thousands) which God had declared off-limits.
It is truly impossible for you and I to fully grasp how easy God's intended plan was for us. If we could somehow travel in time to the beginning and preach to sinless Adam and Eve about a 'faith of works,' they would look at us like we had lost our minds.
And then we sinned. And with Sin came the curse of Adam. And with the curse there could only come the Law.
God is not a ruthless tyrant, nor an evil sadist, nor a blithering fool. But he is just, and perfectly so. And the Law is the purest statement of justice in existence, because it is the perfect and precise remedy for the curse of our sin.
That remedy just happens to be light years beyond what we can achieve.
When God gave Israel the Law, he was basically saying, 'My plan for you was so easy. So absurdly easy. But you chose Sin, and you are now so infected by it - your every thought, word and deed so corrupted by it - that this massive, complex, interweaving legal system has replaced one, solitary rule.'
How heartbroken God must have been as he gave us his Law! How it must have sickened him to help us understand how utterly consumed we are by devilry. It is perhaps not inappropriate to call the Law God's 'protest song,' sung Bob Dylan-style against his most beloved creation which had sunk to the depths of hell itself.
And the 'protest song' metaphor is appropriate in another way: the Law was also a demonstration of just how far God would have to go, how infinitely much it would come to cost him, to free us from the slavery of Sin forever.
It would cost him his only Son.
I am far from an expert on the Mosaic Law, and one thing I have no idea about is precisely why God allowed the Law to exist as the impossible standard for so very long (well over a thousand years). But God's timing is perfect, and two thousand years ago God took the Law out of our hands and into his own, by sending his only son into the world in the form of a human named Jesus.
There is one more terrible factor at work here which I have failed to mention, and will elaborate upon before we reach the absolute turning point of human history.
Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. In God's eyes, every single individual sin, from mass-murder to eating a couple of grapes at the supermarket like Marge Simpson did, is worthy of the death penalty. God is perfect and perfectly good, and as such, any act of evil whatsoever is deplorable to him beyond any outrage we are capable of experiencing.
This is why God, in the Law, introduced the sad and wretched practice of animal sacrifice. In sacrificing animals like bulls, birds and sheep, the Hebrews were given pardon, with the blood of the animals taking the place of the blood of the sinner.
Despicable, unjust, brutal. But God's standard must be upheld, and whereas many pagan gods demanded bona fide human blood, our God was good enough to allow us to offer a substitute.
But here's the problem: these sacrifices were not good enough. Animal sacrifices, even performed flawlessly, could only get Israel what David Jeremiah has called 'forgiveness on credit.' They paid for the sins the Jews had committed, but did not deal with their sinful nature, and as such these sacrifices had to occur on a quite regular basis, year after year. In order to totally fulfill the demands and requirements of the Law, a perfect sacrifice was required.
Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King.
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.
This is why Jesus came. This is why he lived with us. Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law. He lived a perfect life, a sinless life, he was the only human who ever lived who followed the Law to absolute perfection.
And as such, he was the perfect sacrifice we needed.
In his suffering and death on the cross, Jesus paid the debt owed by every one of us because of our hopeless failure as sinners to live up to God's standard. He bridged the impassable chasm between us and God which had been represented by the Law. And in the most beautiful, masterful, cunning poetry, in doing so he returned God's Law for us (in essence) to a single command once again:
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9
That's all we have to do. To be made fully, completely right with God, we must only accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour and recognize the gift of salvation he has given us.
You, right now, are one decision away from freedom, joy and glory beyond the wildest dreams of our spiritual forefathers.
We live in a tragically unhappy age. I'm sure you can see it. People are tired. Angry. Sad. Because we live in an age of works. An age where we have been tricked into believing that we can and must fix our problems ourselves. Money. Rules. Sacrifice. Politics.
Law.
And Jesus is just heartbroken at this, because we are doomed to fail. The life we as a society have chosen is a lost cause. And if we came to our senses, and cried out together once again to our Saviour whom we have rejected, we would succeed instantly.
It begins with you. God so desperately desires to free you of the crushing, bewildering illusion of all the work you must do. He is trying right now to tell you that all the work that ever needed to be done has already been completed forever through the life, death and resurrection of his Son.
The only work required of you is the choice to accept it.
I will close with some Johnny Cash lyrics, from the song that was playing when I made that choice, and fell to my knees and accepted Jesus as my Saviour.
I couldn't manage the problems I laid on myself
And it just made it worse when I laid them on somebody else
So I finally surrendered it all, brought down in despair
I cried out for help, and I felt a warm comforter there
And I came to believe in a power much higher than I
I came to believe that I needed help to get by
In childlike faith I gave in and gave him a try
And I came to believe in a power much higher than I.