Why the Law in the First Place?
Alert reader, Wayne Cannon, writes in with a question regarding the study in the book of Galatians that seems to reveal a flaw in Paul’s Abrahamic argument of grace over law. Why law at all? Why not just skip it? It doesn’t save anybody and apparently causes the entire nation of Israel to run down the wrong track altogether. Why not just cut to grace first and last?
Good question.
In answer let me start by saying I don’t know and neither does anybody else. I hate trying to answer those questions that start, “Why did God…?” I mean I wasn’t invited to the meeting where the Triune God discussed instituting the Law. Anything we say here is mere speculation. On the other hand speculation can be fun and even rewarding, and not knowing the answer has never kept me from faking it before, so here we go.
First of all I am going to avoid the more obvious explanation of needing the Law of Moses to provide us with moral conviction which shows us our need for a savior. Mostly I will avoid the argument because I don’t believe it. I didn’t know a ding-derned thing about Torah or the Jewish law as I was growing up but boy, I sure got a clear moral standard impressed upon me. Nothing Jewish about it. Well, okay there was some Old Testament stuff mixed in there with other moral sources such as Walt Disney and the U.S. Marines.
So I didn’t know squat about Torah, couldn’t have listed the Ten Commandments (what’s harder the Ten Commandments or the Seven Dwarves?), let alone any of the other 603 commands of the Law of Moses. But I certainly did know about guilt, sin, the need to be good, getting in trouble, needing forgiveness, and wishing I could be different but wasn’t. I didn’t need the Law of Moses to let me know I was frequently in deep do-do; I figured that out on my own.
So I am going to let that part of the answer to our main question slide on by.
My real answer to Wayne’s question is this: God needed to institute the Law because He wanted to establish a nation for Himself. The Law created Israel. Without the Law there could be no Israel. It’s what made Israel different from all other nations. It put the “us” in the “us and them” and gave Israel its identity. It was the label or stamp of God. Plus you can’t underestimate the strategy that giving Israel a list of commands as long as three or four arms just might keep them out of trouble for the next fifteen hundred years or so until Jesus arrived.
You could challenge that last assertion by saying that Israel got into plenty of trouble, what am I talking about? And I would reply by saying you should have seen the trouble they would have ended up in if they had had no Law.
I think the point is that Jesus needed to come from the Jews, the chosen people. And in God’s mysterious economy the Jews needed to be found fumbling in legalism and missing the point nearly altogether. Somehow, that was an important part of the plan. And even more oddly, the fact that the Chosen People played a major part in the death of the Messiah squeezes irony out into the entire world like a lemon slice over the iced tea, or like a wedge of lime being squeezed over an authentic Mexican taco. And I think that’s important.
There is a kind of right-brained left-handed reach-out-with-your-feeligs logic to it all. Paul hints at it in 1Corinthians 1 when he says, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are.”
Wayne, my friend, I realize that that may be a completely unsatisfactory answer to your question but as Sir Thomas More summarized in the play A Man for All Seasons,
More: I trust I make myself obscure.
Norfolk: Perfectly.
Any thoughts?
The Gospel Crank
Alert reader, Wayne Cannon, writes in with a question regarding the study in the book of Galatians that seems to reveal a flaw in Paul’s Abrahamic argument of grace over law. Why law at all? Why not just skip it? It doesn’t save anybody and apparently causes the entire nation of Israel to run down the wrong track altogether. Why not just cut to grace first and last?
Good question.
In answer let me start by saying I don’t know and neither does anybody else. I hate trying to answer those questions that start, “Why did God…?” I mean I wasn’t invited to the meeting where the Triune God discussed instituting the Law. Anything we say here is mere speculation. On the other hand speculation can be fun and even rewarding, and not knowing the answer has never kept me from faking it before, so here we go.
First of all I am going to avoid the more obvious explanation of needing the Law of Moses to provide us with moral conviction which shows us our need for a savior. Mostly I will avoid the argument because I don’t believe it. I didn’t know a ding-derned thing about Torah or the Jewish law as I was growing up but boy, I sure got a clear moral standard impressed upon me. Nothing Jewish about it. Well, okay there was some Old Testament stuff mixed in there with other moral sources such as Walt Disney and the U.S. Marines.
So I didn’t know squat about Torah, couldn’t have listed the Ten Commandments (what’s harder the Ten Commandments or the Seven Dwarves?), let alone any of the other 603 commands of the Law of Moses. But I certainly did know about guilt, sin, the need to be good, getting in trouble, needing forgiveness, and wishing I could be different but wasn’t. I didn’t need the Law of Moses to let me know I was frequently in deep do-do; I figured that out on my own.
So I am going to let that part of the answer to our main question slide on by.
My real answer to Wayne’s question is this: God needed to institute the Law because He wanted to establish a nation for Himself. The Law created Israel. Without the Law there could be no Israel. It’s what made Israel different from all other nations. It put the “us” in the “us and them” and gave Israel its identity. It was the label or stamp of God. Plus you can’t underestimate the strategy that giving Israel a list of commands as long as three or four arms just might keep them out of trouble for the next fifteen hundred years or so until Jesus arrived.
You could challenge that last assertion by saying that Israel got into plenty of trouble, what am I talking about? And I would reply by saying you should have seen the trouble they would have ended up in if they had had no Law.
I think the point is that Jesus needed to come from the Jews, the chosen people. And in God’s mysterious economy the Jews needed to be found fumbling in legalism and missing the point nearly altogether. Somehow, that was an important part of the plan. And even more oddly, the fact that the Chosen People played a major part in the death of the Messiah squeezes irony out into the entire world like a lemon slice over the iced tea, or like a wedge of lime being squeezed over an authentic Mexican taco. And I think that’s important.
There is a kind of right-brained left-handed reach-out-with-your-feeligs logic to it all. Paul hints at it in 1Corinthians 1 when he says, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are.”
Wayne, my friend, I realize that that may be a completely unsatisfactory answer to your question but as Sir Thomas More summarized in the play A Man for All Seasons,
More: I trust I make myself obscure.
Norfolk: Perfectly.
Any thoughts?
The Gospel Crank
