In An Age of Lawlessness, Understand the Law’s Purpose

John Adams once said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Yet I can’t help but see that we live in an age when people do not care for right or wrong. By and large, they ignore the Law, unless they can use it to their advantage. People tout “no one is above the law” until the law is used against them, and then cry “no fair.” But the law of any land was never meant as a basis of morality. Laws are only good if the people themselves are moral. The Law is not a shield to protect people (though it can be used to do so), it is there to point to our deficiencies, and the punishments for breaking said laws.

Paul calls the law a caretaker: it cares for us until we can reach that maturity within Christ to be able to understand that it won’t save us (Galatians 3:24). Paul also says that, without the Law, we wouldn’t know what sin was: it convicts us of wrong, and has no power to free us from consequences (Romans 7:7). The Law is good. Just Law, I should say is good. In specific, God’s law is good. But it can’t save us. Not a one of us has kept it, and, being that God is just, we are all equally guilty of breaking it. What is our hope then? Who can save us from ourselves? If the Law convicts us all, which it does, who can save us?

Praise be to God that in His justice, He is also merciful: He saw fit to lay the burden and punishment on Christ Jesus, who took our place. The Law convicts: as we read God’s word, we see the deficiencies in ourselves. Our own conscience condemns: why else would so many people work so hard to justify themselves? Jesus saves: run to Him; throw yourself at His mercy, and live by the Spirit of Righteousness that He has given to those who follow Him. For apart from Christ, the law, because of our own violations of it, is not on our side.

Romans 7

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.