Romans 5:20
Why did God give the Jews the law? And are we still under the law? I’m not sure this most pressing question from today’s passage has been answered to our satisfaction. The quick answer is this…God gave them the law so that they would see their sinfulness and realize that they needed Him in their lives. The answer as to whether or not we are still under the law is this…The written law was meant to be followed until the Holy Spirit was poured out and until God would write His law on our hearts. Now God judges us not by the external law but by what is in our hearts and minds. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).
Mankind has a hard time not thinking that he has to prove himself to God. It is difficult for us to accept that someone would do for us what we could not do for ourselves. There is a certain sense of both satisfaction and expiation if we are able to justify ourselves to God, but there is equal guilt when we fail. And the reality is that we fail more than we care to admit. But if we could somehow “earn” our way to Heaven, Christ’s death on the cross was a waste.
A group of people followed Paul into Galatia and attempted to undermine his teaching by telling the Galatians that it was all right to believe in the grace of God, but that it was not enough. They suggested that to be safe, they needed to join the law together with the grace of God, which is actually an oxymoron. They suggested it nevertheless. Paul reacted in horror: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all (Galatians 1:6, 7). Then Paul launches into a lengthy explanation:
O foolish Galatians! What magician has hypnotized you and cast an evil spell
upon you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death as clearly
as though I had waved a placard before you with a picture on it of Christ dying
on the cross. Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit
by trying to keep the Jewish laws? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon
you only after you heard about Christ and trusted Him to save you. Then have
you gone completely crazy? For if trying to obey the Jewish laws never gave you
spiritual life in the first place, why do you think that trying to obey them now
will make you stronger Christians?...Those who depend on the Jewish laws to
save them are under God’s curse, for the Scriptures point out very clearly,
“Cursed is everyone who at any time breaks a single one of these laws that
are written in God’s Book of the Law.” You’ll never find God’s favor by
keeping the law…The prophet said, “The man who finds life will find it
through trusting God.” He will not find it by obeying every law without one
slip…So, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was
given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God’s laws. But this system
of law was to last only until the coming of Christ…Until Christ came we were
guarded by the law, kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could
believe in the coming Savior…The Jewish laws were our teacher and guide
until Christ came to give us right standing with God through our faith
(Galatians 3 excerpts).
Under the law the Jews were practicing religion. Christ came to establish a relationship with us, not a religion. “God so loved the world that He gave…” From the time of Adam, man had been sinning, but because there was no legal code established, man could act with impunity and say that there was no transgression. God gave man the law to show him his sinfulness and to cause him to long for the day when he would be set free from the bondage of sin and death. You see, the law demands perfection. If we break one law, we’re sinning. The only way we could be certain that we were safe would be to be able to keep the law perfectly, without spot or blemish. The passing mark is 100, not 97! No one has ever gotten a hundred, and no one ever will. If he could, he would have to share God’s throne with Him.
Now we come to the exciting part! The law was to show man how sinful he was, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Abounding grace! I hope that is at the top of your theology heap. There are certain words in our vocabulary that instantly conjure up pictures in our minds. When I say world, for example, my mind immediately swings around the globe, and I see continents and oceans and islands and mountains and valleys and a host of other topographical images in my mind. If I hear the word atom, I immediately think of bombs and destruction and Hiroshima, and I think of electrons and protons and neutrons all swirling around in some kind of organized chaos. But when I hear the word grace, it carries me beyond the universe and into the very heart and essence of Who God is. In the same way the scientist uses the cyclotron and the betatron to penetrate the heart of the invisible atom, so we use the word grace to penetrate the infinite heart of God. There is no other means by which a creature can come to the Creator and no other means by which a sinner can stand before a holy God.
The most important thing to understand about grace is that God never withholds his grace because of sin. Adam had not made it very far from the scene of his rebellion before God sought him, called him by name, and pursued him to his hiding place in the deepest part of the grove of trees. If God had banished Adam into outer darkness forever, as he deserved, it would have indicated that God works by trial and error and that he was surprised that Adam would rebel against His guidelines over his life. But that was not the case. God does not cause every circumstance we face in life, but he uses every circumstance of our lives for His own purposes. Adam’s sin provided the opportunity for God to show forth the wonders of His grace.
Instead of withholding His grace because of Adam’s sin, God made great promises of grace, announcing that the Messiah would one day come, the Deliverer, the Seed of woman, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who would destroy the destroyer and bring man back into fellowship with Himself. God intervened with grace and clothed the guilty pair with coats of skins--in the very garden where they had rebelled. The first blood ever shed on the earth was shed by God Almighty to provide a covering for the sinful couple. Grace was not withheld because of sin; grace was given in spite of sin.
And God has shown us the riches of His grace all down through history. In Genesis 11, we have the story of the attempt to build a city with a tower that reached to Heaven. At this point in time, man had incredible knowledge because he was not that far removed from the time when Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the Garden of Eden. But the tower to Heaven was being built without God. God saw what they were doing and said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Let’s confuse their language so they will not be able to understand each other.” Did the arrogant plans of the princes of this world confound the God of all grace? Did He wring His hands and give up on the ones He loved? No, indeed! In the very next chapter, God stooped down from Heaven and called Abraham to follow Him. Isaiah said, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you, for when he was but one, I called him and blessed him and made him many” (Isaiah 51: 1, 2). Abraham was a devil worshiper like all the others in the Mesopotamia Valley, but that did not stop God from holding back His irresistible grace and calling him out of the darkness and into the light. Grace can never be stopped by sin.
And in the days of Moses, the same principle was at work. God spoke to Moses and gave him the commandments, which were to help the people understand the heart and mind of God. And while God was with Moses, the people were sacrificing to a calf of gold because the Egyptians, from whom the Hebrews left, had worshiped Apis, the bull. And yet, though they paid dearly for their rebellion, their sin did not stop God from laying out the plan of salvation with the atonement of blood that would be a stop-gap measure until the time His own Son came and offered His life as a sacrifice for sin. And on the very mount where God looked down on the awful sin of His people, He gave the specifications for the tabernacle, the altar, the priesthood, and the method in which they could approach His holiness. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Sin rolled as high as Mount Sinai, but the grace of God rolled as high as Heaven!
When Christ came to the earth, the sin of humanity had reached high tide. Christ used a parable to help people see where they were. He said that a farmer planted a vineyard and rented it out while he was away on a trip. At harvest time, he sent a servant to collect his share of the harvest. But the tenants beat the servant up and sent him away. He sent servants three different times with same result each time. Finally, he sent his son whom he loved, thinking that they would respect him. But when the son arrived, they killed him so that they would have everything for themselves (Luke 20:9-16).It’s not hard to figure out the meaning of the parable. Yet, in the midst of man’s incredible sinfulness, Christ died on a cross to provide salvation and a way of escape from the terrible punishment that would be meted out against men’s sin.
In the history of the Christian church, one of the most outstanding objects of God’s abounding grace was John Newton. He wrote,
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
John Newton’s mother died when he was seven years old, but she had taught him a lot of Scripture in those 7 years. He was raised by a relative and became an apprentice seaman. But he was wild and immoral and deserted the British Navy to go to Africa to “get my fill of sin”. In Africa he got involved in the slave trade and, at one point, fell under the jurisdiction of the chief tribal lady, who provided the harem for the ship’s captain. She treated him like one of the slaves, and he had to grovel in the dirt and pick his food up with his mouth from the ground, being lashed by a slave if he touched it with his hands. Thin and emaciated, he was finally able to escape with his life. He wheedled his way aboard another slave ship and worked his way up to first mate. But while the captain was on shore one day, John broke out the ship’s rum and got the whole crew drunk. When the captain returned, he knocked John overboard with a mighty blow from his fist, and John was speared by another sailor with a gaff hook, making a wound so large that John could forever put a fist in the scar it left.
Weeks later, when the ship was returning to Britain, a great storm arose. John had been manning the pumps for days, and in the midst of the storm, he cried out to God. God’s grace was sufficient for even John Newton’s sinful condition.
John Newton became a pillar of the Church of England, chaplain to the Parliament, and evened preached before the King. In his epitaph, which he wrote himself, he called himself the slave of slaves. His sin had abounded, but God’s grace flooded over the mountain of sins and washed him clean.
In evil I took delight, unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object met my sight and stopped my wild career.
I saw One hanging on a tree in agonies and blood,
Who fixed His loving eyes on me as near His cross I stood.
Sure, never till my latest breath can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death, though not a word He spoke.
My conscience felt and owned the guilt and plunged me in despair;
I saw my sins His blood had spilt and helped to nail Him there.
A second look He gave that said, “I freely all forgive.
This blood is for thy ransom paid--I died that thou may live.
Have you been washed by His abounding grace?
-QUESTIONS-
1. What is the difference in practicing “religion” and experiencing “relationship”? Why do some people never experience the relationship part of their Christian faith?
2. Why do you think God created mankind? What is our purpose for being on the earth? Did God know before He created man that man would rebel against His leadership and sin?
3. “God does not cause our circumstances, but He uses them for His own purposes.” What does this mean, and can you give some examples from Scripture and from your own life?
4. Complete the following sentence, “The law was given so that….” Would you rather be under the law or under grace? Which is more difficult to follow? Does being under grace mean that we can do whatever we want? Study Romans 6:15-23 and Hebrews 10:26-32.
5. If a person professes to be a Christian but shows little evidence of a Christlike life, what would you say to him? What is meant by “cheap grace”? Is there such a thing?
6. What is meant by the statement, “God’s love constrains me”? How is the “love factor” inextricably connected to grace?