What would the case be for you or I?
In the Old Testament, God reveals himself to his people Israel. He reveals his standards in books such as Leviticus and Deuteronomy (these standards are referred to collectively as ‘The Law’ and summarised in the 10 Commandments.) These standards are reflective of His holiness (‘God-ness’, ‘Other-than-man-ness’,) and were to be binding upon His people. In effect, God sets the bar for having dealings with Him incredibly high and many things that we as a society consider permissible by consensus would be punishable by corporal or capital punishment under ‘The Law’. In fact, there would be few, if any, of us who wouldn’t be condemned for aspects of our behaviour if the Law were properly enacted upon us. We are, by nature, rebellious.
Jesus and The Law
This didn’t change with the arrival of Jesus Christ. He was accused by the religious teachers of His day of teaching people to disobey God’s Law but by he proclaimed (recorded in Matthew 5:17-19) the following:
a) that he had come to fulfill the Law completely – no one had ever done this
b) that the Law was eternal and would never be revoked in any way
c) that anyone who broke even the smallest part of the Law had no business with God and that only those who kept it completely, did. If anything, by His teaching, Jesus raised the already high bar even higher! (For examples see Matthew 5:21-48)
The Problem
Okay, if you’ve followed up to this point, you should have detected an obvious problem:
a) None of us are perfect (Romans 3:23)
b) God is nothing but perfect! (2 Samuel 22:31, 1 John 1:5)
c) It is impossible for perfection to be in harmony with imperfection (Amos 3:3)
d) So it follows : No one can ever be in relationship with God – what a terrible state of affairs!
The Solution
So what is the purpose of the Law? It seems that it is impossible to keep. Is it to be obeyed? The fact is, the Law was given for this purpose: to reveal our dire situation in relation to God (Romans 5:20), to cause us to be distraught about this and to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24.)
Remember what I mentioned above: Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law; to do what we could not do on our behalf, namely to live a perfect life, to die in our place and allow us to be in relationship with God the Father through Jesus’ own achievements in His life, death and resurrection. Speaking of God’s free acceptance shown to we who are completely unworthy John 1:17 says “The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” and 2 Corinthians 5:21 , speaking of Jesus taking our punishment in exchange for His righteousness, says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
