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Are Christians Bound by the Written Law?
Authored by Scott |
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The question of whether/how much the Law applies to Christians has been the subject of debate for quite some time. It's true that the Law is extremely important, and very much alive. But are Christians "subject" to the written Law? The answer is a clear "No"! |
"The Law can
only chase a man to Calvary, no further."
- D.L. Moody
Many Christians have become entangled in the belief that they are somehow subject to Old Testament written Law. Some have even gone so far as to institute practices and observances associated with the minutiae of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) of the Jewish tradition. While understanding of the laws and feasts, etc. is certainly of historical value, and can aid Christians in understanding how these observances (the feasts) relate to prophecy, both fulfilled and as-yet unfulfilled, the Bible makes it clear that Christians (true believers) are not subject to the Law.
I will use various Scripture references, excerpts from the Holman New Testament Commentary, and other sources in support of this position.
The Bible tells us:
"Now we recognize and know that the Law is good, if any one uses it lawfully--for the purpose for which it was designed" (1 Timothy 1:8 The Amplified Bible).
For what purpose was God’s Law "designed?" The following verse tells us:
"The Law was not made for a righteous man, but . . . for sinners" (1 Timothy 1:9-10).
It even lists the sinners for us: the disobedient, the ungodly, murderers, fornicators, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, etc. The Law’s design is not for the saved, but for the unsaved. It was given as a "schoolmaster" to bring us to Christ1. It was designed purely as an evangelistic tool.
Neither should the Law be used to produce something we call "legalism." We are given incredible liberty in Christ (see Galatians 5:1), and there are those who would seek to steal that liberty by placing the Law on the back of Christians. Obviously a Christian refrains from "lawlessness." He doesn’t lie, steal, kill, commit adultery, etc., However, his motivation for holy living isn’t one of legalism imposed upon him by the Law. Why does he refrain from sin--to gain God’s favor? No. He already has that in Christ. He lives a life that is pleasing to God, because he wants to do all he can to show God gratitude for the incredible mercy he has received in the Gospel. His motive is love, not legalism.
- From ""Words of Comfort", by Ray Comfort (www.raycomfort.com)
The Apostle Paul declares "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain." (Galatians 2: 21 - NKJV)
The mature believer in Jesus Christ is not one who never struggles to obey God. Rather, the mature believer is one who has been released from the Law's condemnation and made free to serve its requirements by dying to the Law through Jesus Christ.
Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. Romans 7:9 (NIV)
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. Gal 2:19 (NIV)
Paul uses an illustration from marriage in Romans 7:1-6. Just as the death of a husband frees a wife to remarry, so the believer is not free to be united to God until he or she is dead to the Law.
Paul is laying the groundwork here to answer the objection that the gospel of grace sets aside the Law; nullifies it; abrogates it; makes it useless. Paul is proving that it is the Law that gives the gospel of grace power and authority. He is going to show that when believers die to the "sinful passions aroused by the law" (v. 5), they are free to be united with another. That is the Law. And without that Law, there is no skeleton upon which to build a new creature in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17). As new creatures in Christ, the Law is written in our hearts2.
In the case of his illustration, marriage, Paul's point is that laws governing marriage are null and void when the marriage union is broken by the death of one spouse. Death is the only thing that frees one from the lordship of law in marriage.
The principle Paul states applies to law in general: law has authority over a man only as long as he lives. Literally speaking, Law is "lord over" (kurieuo; see also Romans 6:9,14; 14:9) a person only while that person is alive, "because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." (Romans 6:7 (NIV))
The object of the new relationship is "that we might bear fruit to God" (v. 4). Paul is going to demonstrate, by applying the illustration to believers, that no one bears fruit to God by way of the Law. The only way to "bear fruit to God" is to get out of the relationship with the Law and into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Only one thing will release one from the old and unto the new--death to the old. It is obvious that Paul's analogy does not flow point-for-point, and that he did not intend it to. To strain at making dot-to-dot connections between his illustration and his application will result in frustration. Remember simply that in verse 4, he isolates the key point of the marriage illustration: death to the Law is necessary in order for one to be joined to Christ.
And how do we die to the Law? This is obviously a reference back to Romans 6:2-7 where Paul used baptism as a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of the believer with Christ--all by faith reckoning (Rom. 6:11). While Romans 6 dealt with our death to sin, Romans 7 deals with our death to the Law. The "Aha!" for the believer comes in discovering that death to one is death to the other. Paul will say later in chapter 7 that he would not have known what sin was if the Law had not told him what was sin (Rom. 7:7). The Law sets the standard, reveals that we have failed to meet the standard, produces guilt over the failure, and condemns to death. In Romans 6, we die to the penalty of sin since Christ died in our place and we died with him. In Romans 7, we die to the Law that is always there, continually revealing the sin we commit. By dying to the Law we die to the guilt it produces. By dying to sin we die to the penalty the Law dictates. The gospel delivers the believer - from sin and from the Law.
Though we have been freed from the control of sin, we have not been freed from the contest with sin. . Neither the Law nor sin disappear from the believer's life after the salvation experience. Their presence creates the conflict, the birth pangs, if you will, which cause us to "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23).
Romans 7 seems to view the Christian life from a defeatist perspective while chapter 8 views it victoriously. The purpose of this contrast is to show that Christians can be defeated by the Law and the sin it reveals if they do not remain identified, moment-by-moment, with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; if they do not accomplish the Law's goals in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. How did we get to the "new way"? By the "written code," the Law (Rom. 7:6). The Law continues to have that value today. No one comes to Christ in faith, even today, without a clear recognition of his or her sin--the personal yoke of guilt we bear for having violated the righteous standards of a holy God.
Paul's point is to show how the gospel can free anyone from the yoke of slavery to the Law and its condemnation of sin. Just as justification is not accomplished through the Law (Rom. 6:14), neither is sanctification accomplished through the Law (Gal. 5:18).
Conclusion
The majority of my exposition has centered around Romans 7 & 8, because I think the marriage illustration is one of the most easily understood and straightforward. This is by no means the only set of Scriptures which clearly lay out the Christian's freedom from the Law, however (Galatians 5, for example). But for the sake of brevity, this paper will not delve any further into other Scriptures at this time.
The bottom line is this: Believers need to recognize the supreme value and goodness of the Law as an evangelistic tool, for unless they realize their sin, (through the Law) no one will come to Christ.
If, as a believer, you have not let go of trying to justify or sanctify yourself through the Law, you have not "died to the Law", and are committing spiritual adultery in your relationship with Christ. The Law is in your heart, if you are a believer. The Law is no longer your schoolmaster, for you have been brought to Christ. School's out, kids. You have come to Calvary. The Law can chase you no further.
To God be the glory!
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Scripture References:
1 Do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking to men who know the law--that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
5 For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.
14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
1 So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law.
…the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness
2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
7 What 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."
1 So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law.
2 Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ cannot help you.
3 I'll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey all of the regulations in the whole law of Moses.
4 For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace.
5 But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith.
6 For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.
7 You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth?
8 It certainly isn't God, for he is the one who called you to freedom.
9 But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others--a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough!
10 I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will judge that person, whoever it is, who has been troubling and confusing you.
11 Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching that you must be circumcised--as some say I do--why would the Jews persecute me? The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through the cross of Christ alone.
12 I only wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves.
13 For you have been called to live in freedom--not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.
14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
15 But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.
16 So I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.
17 The old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, and your choices are never free from this conflict.
18 But when you are directed by the Holy Spirit, you are no longer subject to the law.
19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure,
20 idolatry, participation in demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group,
21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kinds of sin. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
22 But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law.
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.
25 If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.
26 Let us not become conceited, or irritate one another, or be jealous of one another.