We are in our second week walking through Paul’s letter to the very young Timothy pastoring the church in Ephesus. Last week we looked at Paul’s encouragement to hold fast to the gospel handed down to them by Jesus and this week we get a better picture of the problems in Ephesus. One of their problems was with the way they understood the law. 

All of us have natural dispositions when it comes to how we engage with the law and that is going to affect how we understand what Paul is saying. Some of us tend to be more law abiding or rule oriented than others. Some of us thrive with rules and regulations and others of us thrive pushing the boundaries of the rules and regulations in our lives. Hypothetically, you might tell one of your kids to take the dog out and that kid (again, hypothetically) takes the dog one step outside and comes right back in. Then the dog goes to the bathroom on the floor in the house and said child says, “You told me to take the dog out and that’s what I did.” Well, said hypothetical child was using the technicalities of the law, but missing the whole point of what was being communicated. And what is the result of that interaction? Strife in the household. 

And this is the problem. Remember, Paul is writing this so Timothy to either remind him or instruct him what it looks like to be a loving household the way God has designed. In this passage Paul is rebuking them for the way they are using the law, that is specifically the Law of Moses, and he has this fascinating sentence. He says that we know the law is good if one uses it lawfully. So we have to understand why the law is good and the danger of using it unlawfully. Just a warning, my first point is much longer than my second. 

1. Why the law is good

You hear people both inside and outside the church make the case that the Old Testament law is outdated and because we live in the New Covenant, we don’t have to really abide by the laws of Moses. Many of you are familiar with a famous preacher who said it’s time to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament completely. Well, that’s clearly not Paul’s view because he says the law is good. How exactly is the law good? 

To best understand why the law is good, we need to look at the three main purposes of the law. The first purpose is to restrain evil. The law of God keeps us from being as bad as we otherwise might be. It serves to protect ourselves from doing things we otherwise would not do, but it also protects ourselves from others doing things they otherwise would not do. This is why Paul says in verse nine that the law is NOT laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane. Many have made the argument given the way Paul is writing that he’s summarizing the first four commandments here. The commandments about how we are to relate to God. 

Paul then goes on to walk specifically through the commandments that tell us how to relate to each other. But he takes each commandment to a sort of logical extreme. He says that the law is for those who strike their mothers and fathers. What’s the fifth commandment? Honor your father and mother. Striking them would be as clear a violation as you could imagine. Then he says the law is for murderers. What’s the sixth commandment? You shall not murder. Then he says the law is for the sexually immoral and specifically talks about practicing homosexuality. That’s a violation of not only the seventh commandment to not commit adultery, but also a violation of the sexual ethic that God has laid out for our good that sex should be enjoyed by a man and a woman in the union of marriage. After that Paul says the law is for enslavers. What is the eighth commandment? You shall not steal. What could be worse than stealing a person? It boggles my mind that some Christians used the Bible to justify slavery when it is so clearly condemned by it. And what comes after that? Liars and perjurers. That’s the ninth commandment. You shall not bear false witness. And even though Paul doesn’t specifically mention the tenth commandment, you shall not covet, he includes this catch all statement at the end, “and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

This is what we call the moral law and it’s never going to go away. I’ve seen Christians confronted for breaking these laws and called to live more in line with what God wants for our lives and they respond by saying, “Stop being so legalistic.” It’s not legalism to want to live, as best we can, in line with these laws of morality. It’s for our good. Now, our legal system may enforce some of these laws and not others and that’s up to our government, but we as Christians should strive to live within the boundaries of this law. The law is given for those who break the law and that is all of us. Which leads me to the second purpose of the law that is also good. 

The law mirrors the character of God. The law gives us a glimpse at the very character of God. And because it does, it also helps us to see ourselves better as well. One of the effects of the medicine I have to take after my heart attack is that I bleed and bruise very easily. Two weeks ago I was helping Angela pull some bushes out of her garden and one of the branches of the bush nicked my skin right under my eye. It was such a small nick that I didn’t even think twice about it. But, later that night I looked in a mirror and it looked like I had been punched in the eye. I had no idea anything was wrong, but the mirror showed me otherwise. 

The law functions in a similar manner. Because we are all sinful, when we really look into the mirror of the Law of God, we see a holiness that we can never live up to. People try to say that the law is bad, but it’s quite the opposite. The law is so good that it shows us how bad we are. You might even say that bringing the law into someone’s life is like living in a dark room and all of a sudden having the brightest lights turned on. The lights are good, but you’re so used to the dark you can’t handle the light. You might even try and shield your eyes from it. And not only does the law show us that we are sinful, but it actually arouses our sin even more. Paul said that through the law comes knowledge of sin. Were it not for the law, he wouldn’t know what it meant to covet. The law not only shows us that we are sinful, it provokes the sin within us. 

I remember getting on a bus when I was in my 20’s and I was the only person on the bus, but the driver, who apparently thought he was a king and the bus was his kingdom, said not once, not twice, but three times that I had to make sure I was behind the yellow line that separated his front area of the bus from the rest of the bus. Well, when we got going, what do you think was the first thing I did? I put my toe over the line. The thought of crossing the line had not even entered my head until he made such a big deal about it. The same thing is true with the law. It’s not only a mirror that shows us how far we are from the holiness of God, it provokes our sin to be even more unholy. 

St. Augustine, in his famous book Confessions, told a story when he was a boy he snuck into a pear orchard and stole some pears. Looking back at the incident years later he observed that at the time of the incident, he wasn’t hungry and he didn’t even like pears! He actually threw them to the pigs after he took it. So, why did he steal the pears? He said, because they were forbidden. If no one had told him that he couldn’t steal the pears, he would have never thought to or desired to steal them. It was the law that aroused the desire to steal the pears. 

That’s how our hearts work. The more moral law we are exposed to, the more our sinful desires are aroused. It acts as a sort of greenhouse for our sin to grow and blossom. And as that happens, Paul says that the fruit we bear will be for death. The law didn’t bring death, it revealed the thing inside us that is: sin. This is really important because the question many Jews of Paul’s day and even many today is who do we blame? Who do we blame for our struggle to honor God with our lives? I’m using a Tim Keller argument here, but in our culture, on one hand, you have the progressives who never call anyone sinful or evil, including themselves, because all problems are really functions of psychological or sociological dynamics. 

I was watching a show not long ago where people land on Mars in 1995 in an alternate reality and there is this one man who would fall into this more progressive camp and he is struggling with the rules of the US military at that time and he says, “When we are 220 million miles from earth, who is to say what is right and what is wrong?” Do you hear what he’s saying? He’s saying that right and wrong are social constructs. But, what happens when that is your view and then you really do something far more cruel or cowardly or worse than anything you ever thought you were capable of, you have no category for it. You’ll go into denial, depression, anxiety, or worse.

Then, you have the conservatives, on the other hand, who do use the terms sinful and evil for the people ‘over there.’ These conservatives’ very identity is based on the idea that, “I’m not one of those sinful, evil people. I’m one of the virtuous people.” What happens when they find themselves doing things that are cruel or cowardly or worse than anything they’ve ever done? Just like the liberals, they won’t have a category for it. Only the effects can be worse because there is even more shame. 

In either case, when confronted with the depth of our sin, it will drive us into denial, depression, anxiety, and it can and has even driven people to suicide. Only the Christian worldview can understand that we are both evil and loved. How is that possible? Think about when Jesus said, “You who are evil give good gifts to your children. How much more then will the Father give good gifts to you?” Do you hear what Jesus is saying? You are at the same time loved and evil. How is this possible? It’s because God loves us so much that he took on the requirements of the law himself. Jesus’ perfect life fulfilled all the requirements of the law that we all fail at. Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty we deserve for our sin as he took on the wrath of God in our place as he died. We who put our faith in Jesus are now seen every bit as righteous as he is and freed from the curse of the law because he has taken the curse on himself. This is why Paul said to the Roman church, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. - Rom 8:1 

We are evil and loved. This is the conclusion that Paul came to. We can’t fix our law and sin problem. Martin Luther said, “The law is a hammer that crushes the self-righteousness of human beings. It shows them their sin, so by the recognition of their sin, they may be humbled, frightened and worn down and so may long for grace, which they find in Christ. The law is our school master to bring us to Christ.” 

Paul says in Romans 7 that the law was weakened by flesh. What does that mean? The law doesn’t have any flesh. But we do. The law is weakened by our flesh. We are the weak point. The law is weakened because we cannot do what it demands. So God does it for us in Jesus. So, if that is the case, what role does the law play in our lives now? This is the third purpose of the law: A guide toward our sanctification. 

This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he says we are to use it lawfully. Once we are freed from the curse of the law because it has been fulfilled by Jesus, that law doesn’t cease to manifest the character of God. We may not have to follow the law any more for our righteousness, but now we can follow the moral law, however imperfectly, to honor God with our lives and as we do we are increasingly conformed into the image of Jesus (which we call sanctification) and as that happens, we grow in our own satisfaction and joy. Again, not because we have to, but because the Spirit inside of us has written this law on our hearts and we desire to. 

Think about a romantic relationship. What is the culminating moment of most romantic relationships? Getting married. Publicly declaring your love and devotion to each other as long as you live. Well, what if on the honeymoon, your new spouse decided they didn’t need to say anything nice to you, they didn’t need to show physical affection, and they didn’t need to spend time with you? That would feel odd. But what if the spouse said, “Look, we’re married now. It’s official. I don’t need to do all those things anymore because we’re married.” That would be really misunderstanding what it means to be married. Now that you are married, it’s not that you have to do those things, but you get to do them all in the one relationship where you are fully known and fully accepted. And not only do you get to show your love everyday, you find enjoyment in it. 

That’s a picture of the relationship we are in with God. The only true relationship where we are fully known and fully accepted and it is going to last for all of eternity. We don’t have to follow the moral law to be accepted. We are accepted and following the moral law helps us to grow in our relationship with God. If we know that the basis of our relationship is the gospel and not our works, then we are freed up to enjoy the law. It’s no longer a ransom letter demanding that we do something to receive something, but a love letter calling us into a deeper relationship with God. And the more we see that, not only will we love God more, but we will love each other more as well. And here is where we get to the problem in Ephesus. 

1. The dangers of using the law unlawfully

There were those in Ephesus who were still looking at the law as the way they were justified in the eyes of God. They were actually taking the law and adding things to it to make them feel like they were accomplishing the law. You may remember that this is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. They added all these little laws to the Mosaic law to make them feel like they were accomplishing the whole thing. If the law said to honor the sabbath, they would make all kinds of rules about how many steps you could take or what actually constituted work. It was the equivalent of that hypothetical kid taking the dog outside one step and coming back in. 

And if this is the way we look at the law, there is one problem above all: we don’t recognize that we are sinful. We don’t see that we can’t accomplish the law. And if we don’t see our sin, if we think we can attain the moral law, if we don’t look at the law and see our own condemnation, and if we don’t see in the law what Jesus has done for us, then the result is going to be pride which is the opposite of love which is the main goal of the gospel according to Paul in verse five. Love. 

We should all be on guard against those who are going to try and fix your marriages, your children, your jobs, your social justice, your finances, or even your prayer lives simply by turning it into a new kind of law. Even Christians can do this. We can slip back into this because we are still sinful. We can subtly slip into seeing the law as that which justifies us. As that which gives us value and when we do that, the natural result will be division. 

We need to constantly be repenting of our sins…all the ways we fail God in the law…and running to Jesus who has accomplished it for us. Only then will we find the grace to enjoy our marriages, children, jobs, social justice, finances, and prayer lives. When we know that those things don’t justify us, but give us an opportunity to know and glorify God even more in them. When we see certain moral issues as giving us more value as a Christian, we are elevating them to law status. And when that happens we become a slave to it. And that slave master will not allow you to befriend anyone who has not embraced that same law and as a result does not have the same value as you. But, what’s really interesting is that when we see the law as totally accomplished in Christ, we are freed up to find more satisfaction in things like marriage, parenting, finances, etc and freed up to love brothers and sisters with different views. 

But we have to be careful not to fall way over to the other side of the spectrum of unlawful use of the law either. We can’t give our lives to Christ and then see the law as having no value because we aren’t saved by the law. I see this so often in our society today. If the law is still a manifestation of God’s character, then should we not value it? But, it isn’t a pull yourself up by the bootstraps relationship to the moral law, it’s a love relationship. Always the way to overcome a desire is to possess an even greater one. The love we have in Jesus, made real in our hearts by his Holy Spirit, is what drives us to want to honor him with our lives. 

And the more we honor him, the more that love for him grows in our hearts…and that love is a love that can’t help but spill over into our love for each other. So can you see why a lawful use of the law is so important to Paul? If we look at the law as our justifier, we will love ourselves more than others because we are the ones saving ourselves. If we abandon the law, we will love ourselves more than others because we’ve made ourselves a type of god. But, if we see the law as the requirements we could never do, but have been done by Jesus in our place, and which now leads us more closely into a love relationship with him, the household of God will flourish in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.