The law

If sin is essentially about the condition of our hearts, if sin is essentially about our response (or lack of it!) to God’s Love which consequently colours our behaviour, what then is the point of the Ten Commandments? Why does God bother giving his people a code of conduct, why is there a 'law', if conduct isn't really the point?

it seems to me that the law is essentially a description of what life looks like if we really were to live in the light of God’s Love, if our actions and our behaviour were defined by his Love. I have to be honest and admit that there are many aspects about 'the law' as it is written in the Old Testament that I simply don’t get. To my sanitised Western ears some laws come across rather gruesome and rather harsh and can make us question whether God really is Love. I am sure there are scholars who have studied the context of the culture at the time and who therefore have a better understanding of particular laws and can give explanations.

Nevertheless, to a simple mind like me, judging by what the law describes and judging by the way it is summed up even within the books of the law themselves and then significantly by Jesus, it still seems to me that the point of the law is to describe what behaviour determined by Love is like. The ‘law’ that overarches all of them, according to Jesus and according to Moses is: Love the Lord your God with all your heart ...

However, the Bible equally makes it very clear that living according to the law is not ‘it’. Living according to the law is not what produces relationship with God. A married couple could be living completely according to what a marriage should be like, according to the ‘laws of marriage’ if you like. But unless there is a bond of love, unless what they actually do is coloured by their love, it is meaningless. Living according to the God’s ways without the context of a relationship is equally meaningless. It is only if we have a meaningful love relationship with God because we have turned to him that living according to the law he gave makes any sense. 

Jesus often disputed with the religious leaders about this. “In the law it says you should not kill. Well, I tell you that if you hate your brother you have already broken the law.” “In the law it says you should not commit adultery. I am telling you, it goes deeper than that. If you look lustfully at a woman really you have already broken the law, even though you have not physically committed the act of adultery.” “It is not what goes into a person which makes him unclean, but what comes out of a person.” “Out of the overflow of man’s heart his mouth speaks.” His point is clear. It is always a matter of the heart.  

Paul explains that the point of the law is to highlight the fact that none of us live Love's way. For all of us, our behaviour is not always entirely infused by love. The law shows us how we all fall short of God’s standard and miss the mark of his Love. Because there is a law we become aware that there is more, that we have somehow fallen short. In that sense, the law condemns us. Yet while the law points out our shortcomings, God doesn’t! He is not surprised by our short falling.  He knows that without the indwelling of his Love in us we always fall short - yet he doesn’t hold that against us. He forgives us. In fact, because he is Love, he wants us to see that of our own efforts we cannot live defined by Love. None of us can keep the law! He wants that realisation to inspire us to seek Him with all our hearts, to open our hearts fully to him, to his Love and to allow it to transform us.