Romans 6:14 says we are not under law, but under grace. In my experience, that verse is easier to quote than it is to hear, believe, and take to heart. It is good for us to meditate on it.
Scripture is adamant that no one has ever been justified by works of law (Romans 3:20, 27–28; Galatians 2:16; Galatians 3:10). No one is justified in God's sight by obedience to law – neither the Law of Moses, or any other law.
Someone once told me that when Scripture says we aren't under the Law (Romans 6:14), it doesn't mean that we don't have to obey the Law. Rather, he claimed, it means that we aren't justified by keeping the Law. That makes sense if you don't think about it too much. But once you start thinking about it, you realize that if our being "not under the law" means we're not justified by keeping the Law, then surely it follows that the Old Testament saints who were "under the law" were justified by keeping it. But that contradicts the plain teaching of the epistles, doesn't it?
The only way I can make sense of these two claims in the epistles is to conclude that the Old Testament saints were under the Law only as a rule of life – never as a means to justification –, so the epistles' claims that we are not under law must mean that we aren't under the Law even as a rule of life. I don't find evidence in the New Testament that we are to keep the Law for any reason: either as a means of justification, or as a rule of life. And yes, that includes the Ten Commandments.
I realize that Romans 6:14 is referring to law as a principle, not to "the Law" as a specific code. But that distinction might not be as significant as it seems at first. No doubt "law as a principle" includes the Mosaic Law, that's self-evident. But it's not a stretch to extrapolate the Mosaic Law into "law as a principle" when we consider that it was given by God Himself. In other words, our problem with the Mosaic Law isn't that it's a defective law, but that the principle underlying it (or any other law) is not how God deals with us.
This is the fundamental claim in Romans 7:12–14. The Law is good, but I am not.
Technically speaking, only Israel was ever under law: the law wasn't given to the Gentiles, but to the children of Israel at Sinai. Romans 2:12 makes this clear: there are those who sinned "without law," who will perish "without law." On the other hand, those who sinned "under law" are condemned "under law." In this very simple taxonomy – only two categories! – both are condemned, but they aren't mixed up.
"Not under law, but under grace" means God deals with us, not on the principle of law (what we deserve), but on the principle of grace (He gives us freely what He desires us to have).
Now, it's important to note that only one Man is justified on His own merit. For God to declare Him righteous is only acknowledging what He is in Himself. The rest of us have no hope for outside of God's grace. This is the plain teaching of Romans 4:1ff. Abraham and David – one without the Law (cf. Galatians 3:14–18), one under Law – are both justified entirely by grace through faith. God justifies us on exactly the same basis He justified them.
We more closely resemble Abraham than David in that we aren't under law as a rule of life. David was, we are not. But we don't entirely resemble Abraham either, because God dealt with Abraham as a man alive in the world. In this sense, both Abraham and David have a very different experience from us. We aren't alive in the world, but we have died with Christ. A believer who was once under the Law (and I think we can probably include an awful lot of people who grew up in Christendom here) has been freed from it in that he has died with Christ, and has now been freed from law.
And notice how careful the Scripture is about this: we have been freed from law so that we can bring forth fruit to God (Romans 7:4). We cannot produce fruit for God and maintain a relationship with law. The two are incompatible. Either we have law, or we are free to produce fruit for God. We cannot have both.
The problem comes down to this: law as a principle (and the Law in particular) is given to reveal sin (Romans 3:20). And notice it reveals sin, not sins. For many years I misread and misquoted that, thinking the Law reveals which things are sins, and which things aren't. But that's not what the text says; it says that law reveals sin. It reveals our own fallen-ness. It reveals that we are lost. It reveals that we cannot keep rules, even when they are good. It reveals that the mind of flesh isn't subject to the Law of God and cannot be (Romans 8:7).
And notice this is taught in the Pentatuech itself: Deuteronomy 29:4 makes it very clear that obedience requires an entirely new heart. Fallen men and women can't hope to please God (Romans 8:8). It's not merely that they don't want to (they don't), but that they cannot.
So law reveals my own sinfulness, and the Mosaic Law does it better than any other law can. It wasn't given for righteous men and women (1 Timothy 1:8–11). And here's where a lot of dispensationalists go wrong: the Law has not been abolished. Scripture doesn't teach that the Law has died, it teaches that I have. On the contrary, when we tangle with the Law, we find that it does exactly what it is supposed to do: it shows our own sinfulness.
There is coming a day when the Lord will have a people with new hearts, and He will write His law on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:31–34, cf. Deuteronomy 17:18). But that day hasn't come yet, and we're not those people. We haven't had the Law written on our hearts, we have died to it (Romans 7:4). The difference is striking.
I have no doubt that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us here and now (Romans 8:1–4). Notice, it's not that the Law is fulfilled in us, but "the righteousness of the Law" is fulfilled in us. It's not that we fulfill the Law, but we find ourselves walking in the very same righteousness the Law approves.
2 comments:
Legality, by turning back to the principles of the law, at once gives the flesh a place, for the law appeals to the flesh, and the flesh brings in the world. Hence the law, the flesh and the world go together. To correct the wrong use of the law, and the evils of the flesh and the world, the Spirit of God brings in the Cross of Christ. Thus, in the Epistle we find the Cross applied to the law in Galatians 2:20; to the flesh in Galatians 5:24; and to the world in Galatians 6:14.
Then, the law, the flesh and the world being set aside, we have brought in Christ, the Spirit and New Creation. Christ is presented as the rule of life, instead of the law (Gal. 2:20); the Spirit instead of the flesh (Gal. 3:3; Gal. 5:16-25); and New Creation instead of the world (Gal. 6:14-15). We are not to be governed by the principles of the present world, but by the rule of New Creation.
Hamilton Smith The Epistle to the Galatians
"We are not called to die, but to understand that we have died. So scripture uniformly speaks. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," Gal. 2:20. "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him," Rom. 6:6. "Ye are dead," Col. 3:3.
We are never called to die; our Christian profession by baptism was to His death. The Christian not only knows that Christ has died and is risen, and that he is redeemed out of flesh into a standing in Christ, but that he also has died as a child of Adam. What God pronounces in Colossians 3 faith is taught to take up in Romans 6. Reckon yourselves dead as a child of Adam, but alive to God in Christ. "Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds." Now this is the scriptural way of deliverance, a subject treated quite apart from sins, propitiation, and blood-shedding.
Further, this is directly connected with experience, and legal experience in a renewed man. The main truth is that we are dead to sin, according to God, if Christ be in us. But the law has power over a man as long as he lives. But I am delivered from the law, having died in that in which I was held. We are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that we should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead. But this deliverance is a distinct thing, as I have said, from forgiveness. If Christ has borne my sins, and I, through grace, have been brought to believe in the efficacy of His death, I find forgiveness and peace. In itself this is a question of simple facts, if I believe in the efficacy of Christ's work and God's word concerning it to me. The work is entirely outside, accomplished on the cross, accepted of God when He raised Christ from the dead, and believing in it through grace, I have peace.
But if the word says you are dead, my experience says I am not. Well, I am to reckon myself dead: how is this arrived at? Not but by another kind of experience — hopelessness as to the power of sin in myself; and this is really experience under law, requirement from me of what I ought to or would be. And hence the apostle treats it rather on the ground of pure law, and describes the state of a renewed soul under the first husband; law, requiring righteousness, which, weak through the flesh, it cannot succeed in having; for the flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. But the renewed and quickened man is (as to his ground of standing with God) in the flesh, while under the law; it is still for him the question what he ought to be for God. The question here, then, is not how to be forgiven, but how to get out of the flesh, how to be dead as regards its power. Now God does not take us out of it till He has made us feel what it is to be in it. The work which delivers us is done; but we always hope to do better, and are all but despairing till we have learned ourselves, and, knowing we cannot get on, are hopeless as to ourselves, till we know what the flesh is as a distinct thing in us till we look to a Deliverer (not to victory as we are), and then learn that the cross has settled it for ever."
Collected writings vol 23, p202
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