”...having come to know this, that for righteous [the] law is not laid down, but for [the] unrighteous and unruly, for [the] godless and sinners, for [the] unholy and profane, for [the] father-killers and mother-killers, for murderers...”
-The starting point for approaching and using and loving God’s Law is the realization that God is, that He is righteous and holy and breathtakingly good, and I am not. I am not God, and I am not righteous, I am not right with Him apart from His divine intervention. Nor am I good. There is a part of me that wants to do good perhaps, to be good, but there is a part of me that wants to be God, and that’s the problem. That’s where I go wrong. I want to be king of my castle. Lord of the manor. Master of my domain. And that is why the law was laid down, not because we were perfect and perfectly right in God’s eyes, but because we were not. That’s what Paul is saying over in Romans 7.7 - God laid down the law so that I would know that my coveting was actually not the right or godly thing to do. Etc, etc, etc. The law was laid down by the one true God to show sin and godlessness for what it truly is - life lived apart from Him, doing what I want instead of what He wants, putting other things in His place in my heart and life. King Me. I want to have it my way. That is where it all began, and from there all of mankind began its descent into all these other things which Paul goes on to mention. We rebelled against God, against what He wanted, and while He did like Burger King and let us have it our way, He was faithful to give us a clarion reminder of Who He is and of how far we fall short. He showed us the way back.
-So Paul specifically states that the Law was laid down for those who were/are law-less. It is God clarifying the boundaries for all we who rebel against them like sparks fly upward, for those who want no authority over them, who want to be in charge, no god whatsoever (except perhaps in a pinch). It sets the bar for those who fall short, the bullseye for those who miss the mark. In other words, for every last one of us. It shines the light on who God is and what He is like, it shows us how pure and perfect and set apart He truly is, and how we can and should relate to Him. The Law also gives us the gold standard for how we should treat one another, how we should respect and treasure the miracle of life and specifically honor the ones who gave us life - our parents, those whom God put over us as His surrogate authority figures, to help us learn His Law, to learn God's ways such that we grow up to walk in them. But parents we cast off and disrespect just as easily as we cast God and His Law out of mind. And in extreme cases we have children taking the lives of the very ones who gave life to them. Or of a fellow human being. Snuffing out that amazing spark of life, which no man can bring back.
-It goes without saying that much of the spirit of our age flies in the face of God's law, goose-stepping in sync with so many of these things. Disrespect for God, for the things of God, for His Word. Disrespect for parents. Disrespect for life, cheapening life. Taking life, taking it into our own hands. Everywhere you look you encounter life being lived contrary to what God is like, far apart from Him, far from home. His beautiful, perfect, life-giving Law shows us the way back, back to Him, back to life as it was always meant to be, back to the garden, back to paradise... Next verse.
No comments:
Post a Comment