One of the great realities of the First Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh was His fulfilling of the Law and becoming its end. This fulfilling of the Law—its significance and how it affects us as Christians—has often been misunderstood. It is our desire in this issue of Straightway to view this most important truth in the light of the greatest of the commandments given to us by our Saviour while He was on earth.
The Purpose of the Giving of the Law
Though we will be carefully viewing the Great Commandment of the Law, we must first observe the purpose of the Law and commandments of God. The Law was given four times in the Pentateuch: the first time it was orally given by God (Exodus 20); the second time it was written down (Exodus 32); it was rewritten by God after Moses had broken the written set (Exodus 34); finally, it was given orally by Moses to the second generation (Deuteronomy 5).
There was a design behind the giving of the Law and its commandments. What were these specific purposes for the appointment of the Law? The first and foremost intent was to reveal the holiness of God. We must remember that the Children of Israel had just come out of living in Egypt for several centuries; thus coming out of the darkness of that land, they had no true conception of God. Within their brief pilgrimage from Egypt to Mount Sinai, they had shown their disregard of God’s authority and law. Therefore, they needed to first learn His absolute righteousness and infinite holiness. Without this understanding, His very mercy would be abused.
Likewise in our own lives, God must reveal Himself in His righteousness and purity as well as in His love. We carefully see this in the many words of Job concerning his trial in the light of his righteousness. Job believed he had a right to question God for permitting this trial to come to his life. In chapter 38 God finally informs Job that there are many things he does not know that God knows. And when God declared the vast difference between Himself and Job, Job immediately saw this and abhorred himself in the light of God.
God also came to reveal the truth of Himself to Isaiah, who, recognizing his uncleanness, fell at His feet and cried out for purity. So must God come to every soul and reveal Himself—Who He is and what He is—before that soul can rightly understand sin or holiness. The simplest faith will ever be the most reverent.
In Ecclesiastes 12:13 we read the words of Solomon after some twenty years away from God: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” This is the whole purpose of our life: we must fear God and keep his commandments. This becomes the whole duty of man in his living. We must worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire as declared in Hebrews 12:28b, 29.
Another design and purpose of the Law was to reveal to man the perfect standard of living or conduct. God gave this marvelous embodiment of all the essential principles of righteousness and virtue. The Law begins with a revelation of God Himself as the supreme object of worship (Exod. 20:3). Next, it teaches the method of worship (20:4–6) and then the spirit of worship (20:7); these words are followed by the time of worship (20:8–11). After this first section dealing with God and our living before Him, the second section declares man’s relative duties: it first begins with the family, the root of society (20:12); next, it touches our obligation to human life (20:13); it also addresses the need of social purity (20:14), the rights of property (20:15), and reputation (20:16); it finally closes in the tenth commandment with the very spring of action and character—our desires and motives, demanding for them absolute righteousness and purity (20:17). What we read in this chapter of Exodus is a miracle of ethics given by God.
The Law was designed and given to reveal sin and lead the individual to Christ, as well as to the crisis and process need of sanctification. Paul declares in Romans 7:7, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” He states in Romans 3:20, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” In Exodus 20:20 Moses said to the people, “Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.” But God knew His people would break the Law; He never expected them to be saved by their own obedience to it. The Law was given also for them to see through its demands their helpless and lost condition. It was given with the same purpose for us so that we would be driven to accept the atonement and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ as presented in Galatians 3:24: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
The Law must come to every soul in order to reveal self and to convict of sin: “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). It is very clear in the New Testament that Christ will have mercy upon all who believe. Perhaps the story of a poor, dying slave will help us to see the purpose of the Law for us. When this slave lay dying, his master came to see him and took him gently by the hand. The slave kissed his master’s hand and said, “Blessings on this hand.”
“Why, Sam,” the master replied, “how can you say that? That hand never did you anything but harm; it has beaten and bruised you a hundred times; how can you bless it?”
“Yes, blessing on that hand,” the slave replied. “It was that which drove me for comfort to my precious Jesus; He soothed my sorrows, and made my heart so glad that I can only say blessings on the hand of hard, old master for driving me to Christ.”
So the law is a hard, old master; it can only condemn and smite. But it drives us to the cross and to our precious Saviour, and thus we should only bless that Law, too.
The Law not only shows us our guilt and drives us to Christ for our salvation, but also, at a later stage in our experience, it reveals to us ourselves and our utter sinfulness of nature. This revelation of our nature drives us to Him for sanctification. The first operation of the Law is to convict the sinner and lead him to Christ for pardon and justification by faith (Romans 3). But there must come another working of that Law. The soul must see its inherent wickedness and discover “that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). By seeing this, the soul should receive Christ in His fullness for its inner purity and life. This operation of the law is described in Romans 6 and 7.
Like Israel leaving Egypt, for a while the redeemed soul continues on in joy and confidence. Then suddenly the sky becomes overcast. Arriving at Sinai, it hears the voice of the Law. The Christian soul may respond as the Children of Israel did in Exodus 19:8:
And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD.
But the soul soon finds that within, it is neither able nor willing to obey the Lord’s words. Inevitably, the life fails in spiritual living; it submits to sin and despair, and falls under condemnation. How does this lead us to sanctification? This particular condemnation (Rom. 7:24) is the very root to lead the desperate soul to sanctification. This working of Christ brings us to realizing our own helplessness. It causes us to come to the end of self. And when discouraged and defeated with the soul’s vain endeavors and its broken vows and purposes, it cries in despair, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). Only at this time does the soul find the same blessed Friend Who set it free from guilt in the new birth now standing by its side and offering His indwelling life and power to save from self and the sin principle within. The cry, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” brings the blessed assurance in this hope for deliverance (Rom. 7:25).
The Law is the soul’s schoolmaster to lead it to both Christ’s saving and sanctifying power. For Christ has paid the full penalty; one self is dead; another self is alive through Christ in its walk in the new resurrection life, not after the flesh but after the Spirit.
The Place of the Law Under the Gospel
Through Christ we are redeemed from the curse of the Law, for it is recorded in Galatians 3:13, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Yes, He took the curse of the Law. The person who broke the Law has now been executed for his own sin solely through his substitute, Christ. The Law has no more demands upon him. Christ has kept the Law for us; He kept the Law’s precepts and thus puts the believer in the position of one who has obeyed the commandments. “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:4).
Because this is true, Christ has re-enacted the Law in His own precepts and commandments and in His own example and life, where we find the true and perfect rule of our Christian life. It is not that the Law is abolished, but it is raised and re-enacted with greater fullness, sweetness, and spirituality. It is like the second edition of a book, containing important additions and taking the place of the former one. The words of Christ or His commands (as He calls them in Matthew 7:24) become the Christian’s final law. “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.” The Law of Christ is therefore more complete, more comprehensive, more searching, and reaches a higher standard than the Law of Moses. Christ made it clear that the “first commandment” or the first words are, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” (Mark 12:30). Christ took this commandment to be His own for us and then gave a second commandment: “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
The Law in the Heart
This new commandment or Law is not upon a tablet of stone; the Holy Spirit writes this new law upon our hearts and disposes and enables us to keep it. He does this by revealing in us and uniting to us the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who becomes our indwelling righteousness. He so lives in us His own pure and perfect life of love and obedience as we receive Him and yield to His voice and will. Consequently, the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, the anniversary of the giving of the Law! This providential timing suggests to us that He would henceforth be to every believer the very substance of the Law and the power to perform it. Note Jeremiah 31:33:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Yes, the law would be placed in their minds and hearts. This is how the Spirit sanctifies us. According to Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” When He enters the life and controls it, the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us as we live according to the Spirit and not according to the sinful nature.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:3, 4).
Christ has become for us, holiness: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
All this was beautifully expressed and set forth in the second written covenant of the Law, “And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exod. 34:6). The second written tablets of the Law were enshrined in the Ark of the Covenant and thus kept and carried in their midst. Truly in type and shadow, that Ark was Christ. Christ keeps for us the divine Law, and then entering and abiding in us, He keeps it also in us as our life and righteousness.
Conclusion
We must now see that Christ has re-edited the Law, and His words become that which I am to keep and obey. And if I love Him I will obey His commandments. His words now become the Law for the life of the believer as He, the One Who has kept the Law perfectly, lives within the heart. He is the Ark where the Law is preserved and kept forever. He is the Covenant and the Covenant keeper for me. He now brings to me the greatest of the commandments: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:5). This truth is found in the second giving of the Law by Moses; Christ becomes the second giving of the Law to us through His words and heart.
May the Lord bless this continued unfolding truth for this issue of Straightway.