People love laws.
I can almost hear the protests from here … examples of the many, many rule-breakers, rebels, and otherwise lawless types; everyone has a story, an example of just how wrong that opening statement is.
Let me tell you a story of my own. I know a man who grew up in a place he only ever referred to as “The Projects.” Drug deals, gang wars, rape and assault were commonplace events there, if not everyday, the way he tells it. If he walked into a stairwell, and something was going on, he turned around and went another way, or he just didn’t go wherever he was headed, even if it was to his own home. Police didn’t enter the buildings alone, and rarely went there at all. In fact, if people their had a problem with someone, they didn’t call the police. They might get a few friends together and beat the person up in one of those stairwells, and hard-core trouble makers might wind up dead in the same place, but the authorities didn’t get involved until after the fact. You see, the Project residents had a code: you did things a certain way, you proved yourself, you respected others, you looked out for your friends and family. It wasn’t that they there had no law, it was that they had a law of their own that had nothing to do with the law of the land, or even the rules of behavior in more genteel societies. Their rules, their law, was their own.
And I would like to suggest that every rule-breaker, rebel, or lawless type operates the same way. They might despise and disregard authority and rules imposed on them by others, but deep inside, they live by a set of rules they have adopted and developed themselves. Rules define behavior … they tell a person what to do in a given situation. No one is comfortable in a place where they don’t know the rules, because they don’t know what to do, and they don’t know what’s expected of them. Everyone whose had even a passing acquaintance with children knows that they grow up constantly challenging the rules set down by their parents; they always trying to see just how much they can get away with. It’s not that they are simply out to break those rules … they’re trying to figure out what their parents’ rules really are, what the limits are, and how much they are going to accept as their own personal set of rules. There is something in the human psyche that seems to be hard-wired that way: figure out how life works, make yourself a set of rules about how to respond to it, and then live that way.
And what is law, but a defined set of rules? Some law is official, and enforced by various authorities. Some is unofficial, an accepted way of living that, if you transgress it, causes others to be unhappy with you, maybe even to the point of violence. The pattern is the same: if you live by the rules, the accepted law, all is well; and if you break it, there will be punishment and consequences.
And the Bible is full of rules. There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament (Judaism 101: A List of the 613 Mitzah) alone, and God handed down some very explicit rules for His people to follow. But take a good, close look at Galatians 3. I would suggest you carefully read the entire chapter, but I’m going to highlight just this one part: “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor,” (Galatians 3:24-25). Though the Old Testament Law was in fact a set of rules God’s people were expected to live by, that was not the reason God imposed them. His reason, as spelled out very clearly in Galatians, was to teach people how to live a godly life, and to illustrate the principles of God to His people. By the Law, if there was sin, there was a blood sacrifice to made to atone for it. In Christ, the blood of the very Son of God was shed to atone for sin. The Law serves as an illustration, and in fact a very important one, for no lesson is as well learned as the one that guides the very way you live. But according to Galatians 3:25 … the rules God laid down may have been intended to teach us about godliness, but He no longer expects us to live by them.
The reason is, by now we should have learned those lessons. Christ took the penalty of sin away, and by doing so set us free from the the guilt of breaking those rules (Romans 6:6,7); yet, the expectation of godly living still remains (Romans 6:2). The primary difference is not how we live, but why we live that way. Take a look at Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,’ ‘YOU SHALL NOT MURDER,’ ‘YOU SHALL NOT STEAL,’ ‘YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS,’ ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” It’s not adherence to a set of rules that God wants from us. It’s a heart-deep change in the very persons that we are. And if we are godly persons on the inside, we will live in a godly way … and nothing quite expresses the nature of God like true Biblical love (I John 4:7-8).
God even cautions against allowing rules to be the primary principle in how we live (Colossians 2:20-23). Because ultimately, living according to a set of rules is a strictly human effort, and living in the power of the flesh, cannot please God (Romans 8:8). For it to be true godliness, it must be in the power of a life changed by the Holy Spirit, and it must be behavior that flows out of that changed life. Nothing less will do.
And the biggest danger we face in this regard is our very love for creating our own rules and trying to live by them. Most Christians have no real trouble accepting that God no longer requires us to sacrifice animals for our sin, but many still take, for example, the lists of do’s and dont’s you can find at the end of the epistles, and turn them into a new set of rules. Many also will key in on a single verse of instruction, and claim it an inviolate command. And very often, the behavior that results is absolutely correct; those lists are there for a reason, and every verse of instruction is there to instruct us. But if we are obeying the Scriptures just to satisfy the rules, we are not satisfying God, because He wants us to be changed, and He wants us to be like Him. And if we are like Him on the inside, the way we live will make it evident on the outside. In Romans 12:2, we are told to be transformed by the renewing of our minds … not by external obedience to laws and rules. The Pharisees of Christ’s day were very good at keeping the rules, and look what Jesus had to say about them: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness, (Matthew 23:27).”
So then, we should make it our goal to live according to the Law of love, and not according to the love of Law.