23. Law And Grace
LAW AND GRACE Was the law of Sinai ever given to the Gentiles? Was it not given exclusively to Israel? If so, how can it be said that any one has died to the law except a Jewish believer? The law of Sinai was issued only to Israel. That nation was carefully taken out of Egypt and in a separated place in the wilderness it received the law through Moses. In Romans 2:14 it is twice stated that the Gentiles have not the law. And in Romans 6:14 it is plainly declared that the Christian, whether he be formerly a Jew or a Gentile, is “not under the law, but under grace.”
Read Romans 2:14-15, as given in the Revised Version: “For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them.” The thought here is that the Gentiles who have not the law have a conscience which bears witness in agreement with the moral principles of the law, and which testifies against them when they do the things forbidden in the law. They have no written document of the revelation of God’s decrees such as was given to Israel. But God has written these decrees in their moral essentials upon the Gentiles’ hearts. In Galatians 2:16-21 the definite article before the word “law” is omitted, for the apostle there is dealing with a principle. Literally he writes that “a man is not justified by works of law,” and “by works of law shall no flesh be justified.” And in verse 19 he says, “I through law died unto law, that I might live unto God.” And again, “if righteousness is through law, then Christ died for nought.”
Thus we see that all believers, Gentiles as well as Jews, have died to law-keeping as a principle and have been brought into the realm of grace where, since there is no law, sin cannot have dominion over them (Romans 6:14). Is the Decalogue for this dispensation?
No. It was a temporary covenant, given only to Israel, and was “added” (to the Abrahamic covenant) “till the Seed (Christ) should come to whom the promise was made.” “Before faith came” Israel was “kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was” Israel’s “schoolmaster to lead” them “unto Christ, that” they “might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come” even they “are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:19-25). As for the Gentiles, they have never had the law (Romans 2:14). And as for the Christian, he is “not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). The believer is “dead” to sin, to the Law, to the world (Galatians 6:14), legally, judicially, but not experimentally; and the Law has nothing to do with my standing before God, my acceptance in Christ; but is needed to regulate my state, my walk through this world. Is this right? Not entirely. The New Testament declares that “the law is not made for a righteous man”; and if you have been justified by faith that is precisely what you are—”a righteous man.” The Law of Sinai has no direct bearing upon the Christian, though it is a part of the Scripture given by inspiration and is profitable for instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). It is not, however, the believer’s rule of life any more than it is his means of life. In fact, he does not come to Mount Sinai at all (Hebrews 12:18-24). In Christ the Law is “done away” (2 Corinthians 3:1-11); and the promise is that “sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). The Law was a temporary covenant—Israel’s “schoolmaster unto Christ,” that they “might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come,” even Israel is “no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:19-25). The believer’s means of life is Christ, his rule of life is Christ, and his life is Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:1-4). “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
Although those who have been redeemed are no longer under the law, aren’t they still obligated to keep the Ten Commandments, in that they do not steal, kill etc.? The Ten Commandments did not make it wrong to steal and kill. It was just as wrong to do these things before the Law of Sinai was issued as afterward. The Christian is not under the Law of Sinai at all, but the New Testament gives him his rule of life, which is to obey the Lord Jesus Christ in all things. It is a new law of love, written in the believer’s heart through the new birth. Under this new rule, “let him that stole steal no more”; “lie not one to another”; “love one another.” The Christian lives under what has been called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” In 1 John 5:2-3 the word “commandments” is used three times. Is John referring to the Ten Commandments? I have a friend who claims that he endeavors to obey the commandments out of love to the Lord Jesus. If I tell him that no man has ever kept the Law, excepting the Lord Jesus, and no man ever will, he quotes Php 4:13. Believing the entire body of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, he admits and believes that justification conies by faith alone. Furthermore, he claims that the Ten Commandments are written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God upon his heart (2 Corinthians 3:3). He states that I have nine of them written on my heart, but have failed to let the Spirit of God write the fourth one there. He admits that the believer is not under the Law and that love is the believer’s rule of life, and the believer should, therefore, out of a heart of love remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.
How would you handle the situation? I imagine your answer will be that the Law was never given to the Gentile or the Church and therefore there is no sabbath to be observed by the believer. Kindly give me further information. The man who claims that the Ten Commandments are the commandments referred to in 1 John 5:2-3, has the burden of proof upon him. There is nothing there to show it, and certainly God has many other commandments besides the Ten Words of Sinai which He gave to Israel and only to Israel. It is surely a strange state of mind that would lead a man to use the 3rd chapter or 2 Corinthians to prove that we are under the Law of the commandments, since that is precisely the chapter which declares that the Law (and not the ceremonial Law either, but the so-called moral Law, “written and engraven in stones”) is “done away” and “abolished” (verses 11,13).
One needs only to read the Epistle to the Galatians, which is so largely devoted to this question, to find, unless he is absolutely closed against conviction, that the Law of Sinai was a temporary covenant given for temporary purposes “till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Galatians 3:19). If it were not true that the Law was done away in Christ, sin should certainly “have dominion” over “us,” but that dominion is now impossible for the very reason that we “are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). As for the sabbath, it was done away with the rest of the commandments, and though we do have the Lord’s Day as the gracious gift of the risen Christ to us, it is a misnomer to refer to it as the sabbath. Those who do so are guilty of putting the new wine of the Gospel into the old wineskins of Judaism. The result is that the wineskins break, and the wine is spilled, and what we have left is neither Judaism nor Christianity, but a sorry hodgepodge, lacking both the terror of Law and the freeness of grace.
Please explain how the Law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ (Galatians 3:24). The words “our” and “us” refer to Israelites rather than to us. In studying this passage we should be careful to observe the pronouns. Paul, who wrote the Epistle to the Galatians, was a Hebrew, and had therefore been under the Law of Moses until he became a Christian. As for the Gentiles, they have never had the Law, as we are told twice in one verse (Romans 2:14). The word translated “schoolmaster” really means child-conductor. In the eastern household, this was a servant, a part of whose duty it was to conduct the child from the home to school, day by day. The point in the passage is that after conducting the child to school, the child-conductor had nothing more to do with the child. The Law of Moses was a child-conductor for the Hebrews to bring them to Christ that they might be justified by faith. But since faith has come, even the Hebrews “are no longer under a child-conductor” (verse 25). In the 26th verse, the pronoun is changed from the first person to the second. In the Galatian churches the people were mostly from the Gentiles, and since it was true for Gentile Christians as well as Hebrew Christians that they had been saved by faith, the apostle says: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” The Spirit of God had baptized them into Christ, and in this new relationship “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (verses 27-29). Childhood and heirship are not matters of Law, but of promise.
InRomans 2:14;Romans 2:1read that the Gentiles “have not the law.” How and where did the Gentiles get the Law, if they had any, and how were they benefited by the Law, not offering sacrifice? InGalatians 3:23, who is meant by the word “we” in the expression “we were kept under the law,” by the word “our” in verse 24, “the law was our schoolmaster,” and the words “them” and “we” inGalatians 4:5? How doesEphesians 2:12connect with these passages?
It is true that in Romans 2:14 it is twice declared that the Gentiles have not the Law. In Galatians 3:23 the word “we” refers to Hebrews, the writer being one of them. In the 24th verse the word “our” has the same reference. The Law was Israel’s schoolmaster unto Christ, that they might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, even they are no longer under the schoolmaster. Please notice that in verse 26 the pronoun is changed from the first to the second person plural, and all the way to the end of the chapter the second personal pronoun is used because the people addressed were all believers in Christ in the New Testament sense, whether Hebrews or Gentiles. In Galatians 4:5 the words “them” and “we” have the same allusion. The reference is to Israelites who under the old covenant, if they were believers, had the relation of minor children in the family, but who, under the new covenant, are put in the place of sonship. Notice again how the pronoun is changed at the 6th verse from “we” to “ye.” The Law was never given to any but to Israel.
Ephesians 2:12 confirms all this. The Gentiles, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, were, in consequence, strangers from the covenant of promise as well as from all other covenants. They had no hope. They were without God in the world. As to your question, “How and where did the Gentiles get the Law, if they had any, and how were they benefited by the Law, not offering sacrifice?’ my answer is, that they never had the Law. The Law was given to Israel for a particular and temporary purpose, and it is now done away (2 Corinthians 3).
Please explainRomans 5:13, “For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. “
Here we have to go to the Revised Version. In the 5th chapter of Romans it is explained how it was that although there was no law until Moses, yet people died. Death is the wages of sin, but, as Romans 5:13 says, “sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” The answer is in the 12th verse, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all sinned.” Not “have sinned.” That word “have” does not belong in the text. The teaching here is that although men were not under law between Adam and Moses, yet they had all been under law in Eden—a law with the death penalty attached: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam and Eve sinned, and because they sinned they died. And all men were in Adam, and sinned in him, and therefore they die. Thus it is that death passed upon all “for that all sinned.” This same principle is seen operating in Hebrews 7 where it is declared in verses 9 and 10 that “Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.” The context shows that when the apostle says “Levi” he includes the whole order of the Levitical or Aaronic priests. The teaching is that the Levitical priests, all the priests who descended from Aaron, were inferior to Melchisedec; and that this was shown in the fact that when Melchisedec and Abraham met, as recorded in Genesis 14, and Melchisedec received tithes from Abraham, and Abraham paid tithes to Melchisedec, Levi and Aaron and all their descendants in the priestly family paid tithes to Melchisedec on that day because they were still in the loins of their father when Melchisedec met him. And don’t forget that this principle is seen again in the cross; for we are assured that in the reckoning of God we were in Christ on that cross, that we were crucified with Him, buried with Him, made alive together with Him, raised up together with Him, and are already seated together with Him in Heaven. Hallelujah!
1. When a person rejects the gospel, is he put back under the law?
2. If not, how can we convince him that he is a sinner and that he is lost?
3. How did man become a sinner in the first place? Was it by his disobedience of the law of Eden—”thou shalt not eat thereof”?
1. No. There is no law to put him under, for the law was done away in Christ (2 Corinthians 3:7-11). The law was given to Israel only, and it was temporary, lasting only from Moses to Christ, being added to the Abrahamic covenant of promise “until the Seed (Christ) should come to whom the promise was made” (Galatians 3:19).
2. The testimony of John 16:7-11 should be sufficient. Men are lost sinners “because they believe not on” the Lord Jesus as their Savior. Their sin, the sin which condemns them, is in refusing to believe “in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). In rejecting Him they make God a liar (1 John 5:10).
3. No. Man did not become a sinner by sinning. He sinned because he was a sinner. God made him a free agent, able to choose between believing God or believing Satan. God told man that the forbidden fruit would kill him. Satan denied it, and man, believing Satan, became a sinner. And because he was a sinner he disobeyed God and died. So it is today. Man is not made a sinner by his sins, but he sins because he is a sinner. In the gospel, however, ample provision is made for the sinner and for his sins. Christ died for our sins not only, but He died for us. He died, not only for the wrong things we have done, but also for the wrong things we are. “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”