How Does God's Law Apply to Me? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

bearing upon our Christian growth. We reason that the law was for Old Testament believers, not for us today. To us, the Christian life is Christ, not Moses; it’s gospel, not law.

Christians today may speak in glowing terms of their affection for the Word of God, but we have a tendency to divorce the Word of God from the law of God. However, that dichotomy is not evident in this psalm, where throughout we see the psalmist reciting his affection repeatedly both for the law and for the Word of God. Why did the psalmist love the law of God so much?

His word is law, and His law is His word, because His law expresses His will.

If there is a secret that lies hidden from the view of the modern Christian, that secret is found in the books of the Old Testament—not just in the Law, but also in the Prophets and the Wisdom Literature—all of which together reveal the character of God. If we wonder why God seems foreign to us, like an alien or an intruder into our lives; if we stumble and grope in darkness trying to understand how to live in a relativistic age; and if we feel like pieces of chaff that the wind drives away with the slightest breeze; then we need to go back and consider the law of God.

This word antinomian comes from the Greek anti, which means “against,” and nomos, which means “law.” Antinomianism is the belief that the law of God—or at least the Old Testament law—is in no way binding or relevant to the Christian life today.

Scripture itself reveals that certain elements of the Old Testament law have been abrogated.

Therefore, the Christian church has made it clear that we are not to continue these cultic, ceremonial practices of the Old Testament.

The dietary restrictions established in the Old Testament were lifted in the economy of the New Testament. Therefore, Scripture clearly reveals two ways in which the laws of the Old Testament are no longer absolutely binding upon the lives of Christians today.

the Apostle Paul, when he speaks in glorious terms of how we have been redeemed from the curse of the law and are no longer under the law, is careful to warn us against jumping to the very conclusion that antinomians do—that the law has been completely removed from any consideration in the life of the Christian.

In the book of James, for example, James speaks about the royal law of obedience in the teachings of Jesus Himself. In this epistle, where many of the Old Testament laws are reiterated for the benefit of the Christian church, we see that the substantive content of the moral law of the Old Testament still plays a vitally important role in the New Testament community.

So when we deal with questions about the law of God, we are not dealing with peripheral matters or tangential questions, but something that goes to the very core of our lives as human beings who are called to live coram Deo—before the face of God.

There was a fierce debate in the Middle Ages over God’s relationship to the law. Is God outside of the law, or is there some law above God to which He owes obedience and allegiance? This controversy was known as the ex lex controversy—ex meaning “outside of ” or “apart from” and lex meaning “law.”

If He is not sublego, then must He be ex lex—outside of all law and able to act in an arbitrary or capricious manner without any sense of order?

The actions of God are always in conformity to the law of God’s own nature and character, which is inherently righteous and eternally holy. All of His actions come forth according to who He is.

when we are called to obey the law of God, that means that we are called to obey Him.

Part of the nature of God is that He has within Himself supreme and absolute authority, by which He can issue commands to His creatures. But this authority is not exercised arbitrarily. It reflects His eternal, holy character. God can command only what reflects His nature, and since He is wholly good, He can command only what is good. And good is defined by His nature; He is not bound to a standard of goodness outside Himself.

The law we are called to obey is a law that comes from Him. It is His law. It is a law that defines a relationship— the relationship between the Creator and the creature, between the sovereign and the vassal, between the King and His subjects. Not only is it His law in the sense that it comes from Him, but most significantly, it is a law that comes from and reflects His own character. It reveals and displays His righteousness, and therefore, it makes known what righteousness is.

Rather, first there is God in His perfect character, who is the standard of righteousness, and all righteousness is the revelation of who He is.

A sin of commission occurs when we commit an action that transgresses the law of God.

A sin of omission is when God says, “You shall,” and we fail to do what is required.

He argues that in addition to being engraved on tablets of stone at Sinai, God’s law is revealed in nature and inscribed on the hearts of all (even pagans), so that everyone has some knowledge of the law of God, some awareness of what is right and what is wrong.

In other words, Calvin said that the Old Testament law is useful to the New Testament Christian in three distinct ways. First, the law functions as a mirror; second, it functions as a restraint; and third, which Calvin saw as the most important, the law functions as a revealer.

If we want to see an accurate reflection of our moral character, we need a mirror far more powerful than the ones we usually look into, and that mirror is the law of God.

The mirror of the law of God is bad news, but until we look at ourselves in it, we will never understand the goodness of the good news.

If we mean to say that the government shouldn’t be involved in passing legislation that curbs, restrains, or restricts human behavior or morality, there would be nothing left for Congress to do except assign names to government buildings.

Yet the presence of laws that legislate morality does restrain evil in some measure. Without laws restricting certain behaviors, evil would abound more.

God gives the power of the sword to human governments to restrain evil, for if evil is unbridled and unrestrained, society is impossible, and civilization becomes barbarian.

For Jesus, obeying God was His life. It was His meat and His drink. Zeal for His Father’s house consumed Him. So why would He delight in those who despise the things that He loves?

Case law is drawn from precedents, wherein similar prior incidents and their judgments are used to inform the case at hand.

Apodictic law is the foundational, fundamental law that governs the people. It is communicated as personal commands or prohibition, and it carries the force of the moral absolute.

The primary elliptical character of the law of God—which we can see by seeing how Jesus expounds the Ten Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount—is that when the law of God prohibits one thing, it at the same time silently, tacitly enjoins or requires its opposite. And conversely, when it enjoins something, it at the same time prohibits its opposite.

The commandment tacitly commands us to give our entire devotion singularly and consistently to God and to God alone.

We are not to hate others. But on the positive side, it also includes a tacit commandment to work for the well-being of all human life. It isn’t just a negation of murder; it’s a pro-life statement.

However, classical orthodox Christianity rejects this view and teaches instead that the concept of monotheism— belief in one true God—is found right at the beginning of the Ten Commandments.

The commandment does not simply prohibit polytheism or idolatry; it prohibits even the acknowledgment of other gods, even if the Lord God is given pride of place.

The first commandment says that God will not allow His glory and His name to be shared with anything in the created order. God and God alone is to be Lord of the nations, and He alone is to be worshiped.

The basic principle of the first commandment is that nothing that belongs to God is to be ascribed or attributed to any other thing, and the four elements that belong to God exclusively, according to Calvin, are adoration, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving.

Yet, the Israelites have not been the only people to seek after idols. In the first chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul teaches that the fundamental, primordial sin—not just of Israel but of all mankind—is the sin of idolatry, in which the glory that belongs exclusively to God is exchanged for a lie, and people worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.

In reality, idolatry takes place when any attribute of God is stripped from His glory, and we replace the biblical God with a god that we create in our own image.

We cannot pick and choose the attributes of God that we happen to like and discard the ones we don’t, for then we are constructing a false god. The true God is the God who reveals Himself in sacred Scripture.

Rather, he meant that the ultimate trust we cling to for our salvation must be in God.

The word invocation refers to calling upon. On whom do we call for comfort, rescue, and fulfillment as human beings? Do we say we believe in, trust, and worship God, but then appeal to the stars, our ancestors, or to something else to redeem us? Our reliance must ultimately be on God and the help we receive from Him.

In other words, there is another sin that accompanies the primary sin of the fallen human race: in addition to refusing to adore, honor, and worship God, we also refuse to be thankful to God.

For every benefit that we receive from His hand, we should be quick to respond with thanksgiving, praise, and honor.

If we are ungrateful, we violate the first commandment because we are not keeping God, who is rich in mercy and goodness, before our eyes. We are not worshiping Him with the praise of our thanksgiving and gratitude.

When we look at what the rest of Scripture teaches regarding this command, we see that it cannot be a blanket prohibition of art, for then God would be contradicting Himself.

However, what is clearly involved in this commandment is a prohibition against making images that are meant to be replica manifestations of God Himself.

To prevent this worship of earthly things, God prohibits man from making any images of Him, because He, by nature, is invisible. He is a spirit, and He is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth.

Calvin said that fallen man, by nature, is a fabricum idolarum, meaning “idol factory.” We’re not prone to occasionally and accidentally getting involved in the making of idols—we are idol factories. We continually manufacture rivals to God for our devotion.

The word idolatry is a combination of two Latin words: idolum and latria. Latria means worship, so the church prohibited overt worship of idols. However, Rome argued that it is acceptable to engage in idola dulia. Dulia means “slavery” or “service.”