Title: The Purpose of God's Law
Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:8-10
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
For as long as we've had the Word of God, believers have loved the Word of God, because in it we behold the revelation of the Lord, His righteous statutes, His amazing works throughout history, His law, His gospel, His Christ. Psalm 119, which reads like a love poem to God's Word, includes such sentiments as these, O how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine.
I have more insight than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have observed your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep your word.
I have not turned aside from your ordinances, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth. From your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. See, more than a compilation of letters and histories and treatises and poems and laws, the Word of God is the verbal revelation of His very mind and heart to us, and we love it so. Of course, there is an element of difficulty.
There is an element of mystery, an element of complexity wrapped up in the Scriptures, which is why God appoints teachers in every generation who exist to study and explain, apply and exhort with God's Word. We read the words of Paul to fellow pastors. He says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the Word of Truth.
And yet, for every one faithful teacher who rightly divides the Word of God, there seems to be countless numbers of frauds who peddle the Word of God for their own purposes. For pride, for position, or for profit. And so, Scripture warns against such men and exhorts church leaders to guard the flock both from frauds and from their fraudulent teaching.
In fact, it was for this very purpose that the Apostle Paul left his young disciple in the church at Ephesus. And so, we turn now to 1 Timothy 1. That will be the subject of our exposition today. 1 Timothy chapter 1. The Apostle Paul has opened his letter to Timothy, explaining why he was insisting that he stay behind.
He says in the very first chapter, verses three and four, as I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to mere speculation rather than the furthering the administration of God which is by faith. And so, there was a problem in the city of Ephesus, in the church there, where certain men, likely church leaders, church elders, were teaching strange doctrines. And they were leading people into error, into speculation, into fruitless discussion, as he says in verse six.
Of course, Paul asserts that the real purpose for Christian ministry in verse five is this. He says, but the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And so, we saw last time that we were together that the goal of Christian instruction, the goal of this pulpit, every faithful pulpit in the entire world, the goal of that Christian instruction is to teach people what is love to be pared down to.
Well, we looked at last time how we are to love God and love others. If Jesus says that love, love for God and love for others is the great commandment, then by virtue of that, if the goal of instruction here is love, then that is the goal. To teach you how to love God preeminently and love one another affectionately.
But that is not the goal of many who fancy themselves to be teachers. He says in verses six and seven, for some men straying from these things, the love from a pure heart, good conscience, sincere faith, straying from these things have turned aside to fruitless discussion. Then he says in verse seven, wanting to be teachers of the law even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.
As we're going to see later on in chapter three when we get there, this is precisely why Paul instructs the church leaders that they must possess both character qualifications and teaching ability. Just because a person says they want to teach God's Word doesn't mean they should. That's why ordination exists.
That's why examination exists. Paul says in chapter six, verses three through five, that supposed teachers, these same who swerve away from the truth, these supposed teachers, he says they advocate a different doctrine that does not agree with sound words, and then he says they're conceited and understand nothing. Rather, they're obsessed with controversial questions and disputes about words, and they show themselves to be depraved of mind and deprived of the truth.
There will always be a ready supply of fraudulent teachers who will lead you into every kind of erroneous doctrine, foolish discussion, and speculation that will do nothing more than confuse you and lead you into ungodliness. In fact, 2 Timothy 4.3 tells us that the problem will only get worse with time. It's getting worse as time goes on.
He says, for the time will come when they, talking about believers, they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths. I cannot think of another time in history where this is more prevalent than today, and I don't say that with any kind of exaggeration. That's not hyperbole.
Through the onset of self-published books, blogs, personal websites, podcasts, TikTok, YouTube channels, it goes on and on and on. Anybody, anybody can have an audience. If you're popular enough, you can go viral.
It doesn't matter the content. You could be a viral heretic, and there's lots of those. People can literally now accumulate for themselves a feed on their phones, on their computers, on their devices.
They can accumulate for themselves talking heads and teachers that will tell them exactly what they want to hear. You can cherry pick exactly what you want to hear and fill your ears with it. If you're interested in end times, you can subscribe to podcasts that only talk about end times theology.
You can even pick your position and only listen to that. If you're interested in Sabbatarianism, Jewish custom, theonomy, Christian nationalism, social justice, intersectionality, gender issues, head covering, family integrated church movement, personal trauma, pastoral abuse, you name it, anything, you can find an authority source that will tell you what you want to hear and confirm everything that you already believe. In fact, if you're a disgruntled church member, it's only a matter of time before someone launches the disgruntled church member podcast.
Mark my words. And you'll listen to it and go, ah, see, I told you. It's not good to simply accumulate teachers who tell you what you want to hear.
You need to be listening to teachers that teach you God's truth regardless of how it impacts you or how it convicts you. There are teachers over the course of time that are trustworthy and tested that we don't listen to them because they themselves are the authority themselves. No, they're faithful to teach God's word and God's word is the authority.
Why do we insist on expository preaching from this pulpit? Because I don't get to cherry pick the doctrines I want to talk about. There are some things that show up and I'd scratch my head and I say, boy, that's going to be challenging this week. But we do the next thing, don't we? We keep on going and we cover more topics on a regular basis than probably most of you have heard in other churches.
Not because we're so great, but simply because we're systematically faithful to the text. We need to be exposed to God's word, not simply clicking on the things that validate our own presuppositions. Now, does this mean that all websites and podcasts and video channels are bad? Of course not.
There are good ones out there. There are great ministries that are available to you at a click of a button. That's fine.
My concern is with the fact that there are many, verse 7, there are many who fancy themselves to be teachers of God's law, and yet they lack understanding. Yet they speak confidently to an audience of listeners and they will ultimately lead them astray. There are people who are led astray by viral teachers, podcasts, channels, whatever it may be, and they would rather listen to those things than to their small town teacher who just teaches them the word of God.
This is a problem all over the western world. This is everywhere. Now, the context of 1 Timothy here, the phrase, teachers of the law, in verse 7, it could be applied to any teacher of scripture, certainly, but when we examine what Paul is saying here in chapter 1, verses 8 through 11, we see that he has a very specific issue in mind here.
He is, again, he is speaking broadly. Certainly, there's dangers to those who speak confidently, yet don't know what they're talking about, but Paul's going to zero in on one specific kind of issue, which is what we're going to look at today, and that is the use and purpose of biblical law. So, look at this with me, verses 8 through 11.
We're simply picking up from verse 7 last time, because, again, there's verse 7, those who want to be teachers of the law, yet they don't understand what they're talking about, then he says in verse 8, but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Now, this opens up an exhaustive topic, and I was trembling a bit when I considered the idea of trying to explain and expound on this teaching in one sermon, and I would just exhort you, if you're interested in this on a deeper level, when we went through the letter to the Galatians several years ago, I probably spent about 10 or 12 weeks working through the text and dealing with the Christian's relationship to the law, what it means to be bound by law, under the law, the conscience, all kinds of things, Christian liberty, and so we've talked about this a lot as a church. I would direct you back to those sermons if they'd be helpful to you.
We're going to do our best today. I want to try to give you a 30,000 foot view and try to explain what Paul is talking about here in a way that does give understanding. And so what we're talking about now is the function of God's law and the believer's relationship to it.
Over the last several years, there have been whole movements and ministries that are devoted to teaching Christians how to obey Mosaic law. They're huge right now. There's lots of ministries that are doing this, and when you consider Jesus's words in, for example, John 14, 15, where he says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, they'll use verses like that, and we acknowledge the truthfulness and the goodness of such a sentiment from Jesus, but what they teach, what these ministries teach, is that Jesus, when he says, obey me, that he's referring to the believer's obedience to Mosaic law, Old Testament law.
This has led countless Christians into the slavery of law-keeping and legalism. Legalism is making a comeback. Every generation, it seems to come back in some way, shape, or form, and as soon as you rattle it out in this movement, it pops up over here.
There's always the human propensity, the sinful propensity, the weak propensity toward law-keeping and legalism, but this is, in fact, the exact issue that Paul is dealing with in his letter to the Galatians, where he declares to them in the midst of controversy, he says, we declare that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law, chapter 2, verse 16, and he says, furthermore, if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. If you can become righteous by law-keeping, then you don't need Jesus. That's Paul's argument, and yet there are those who profess to be able to teach God's law, and yet they misunderstand its ultimate purpose, and so Paul is addressing this very issue in short form here.
He doesn't get into exhaustive treatments. Well, why? Because he's already done this in other letters. Paul here, writing in the early 60s, is presuming that they're familiar with the teaching that he addressed in Galatians.
Certainly, he had taught the Ephesian church the concept of justification by faith apart from works of the law, so he's only going to just make a reference to this issue, and then he's going to keep on moving, but he begins in verse 8 by saying, now we know, now he's talking to the whole church, we know, believers, that the law is good. The law is good, but then he qualifies if one uses it lawfully. The law is good if you use it lawfully.
This deals with the oft-repeated objection of the goodness of God's law because, again, legalism is so often an issue that would be very easy for us to say, okay, legalism bad, therefore law bad, right? That's how our minds tend to think about things. If mere law-keeping and legalism is not God's desire for us, then we just need to take a knife and a and cut out all the laws in the Old Testament and get rid of it, but that's not what the Bible teaches. Paul is saying here there is nothing wrong with God's law.
In fact, we know, we recognize all of us that the law is good, but of course there is discussion about what is Paul talking about when he says the law is good. Does he simply mean all law in general? Speeding law, traffic laws, property maintenance laws? I mean, is he talking about all law or is he talking about the Ten Commandments? Is he talking about Mosaic law, specifically Exodus through Numbers? Or is he talking about the whole Old Testament? What is he talking about? Based on what he's saying here in verses 9 and 10, it seems as though Paul is referring to the Mosaic law, which includes, by the way, the Ten Commandments, but extends to every single moral, ethical, ceremonial, and civil commandment contained in the Torah. Paul is essentially saying here that all of it is good.
All of it is good. Well, how so? Because the law is given by God, and God is perfectly just and wholly righteous. God is the law giver, so if God is perfect and He gives the law, then what He gives is good.
There's no contradiction there. And the prescriptions and the prohibitions of the law, they reflect the goodness and the righteous character of the Lord. For example, because God is the giver of life, He created all life and said this is good, because God is the giver of life, He has deemed life to be good, therefore He creates a law that says you shall not murder.
The law reflects the value of life, and therefore the good status, the righteousness that God demonstrates in creating life. God is worthy of worship. Because He's worthy of worship, He gives the commandment to set aside one day and seven to worship Him.
And so, again, the law reflects the character of God and is therefore good. The word He uses here in the Greek is kalos. It's virtuous or beautiful or valuable good.
And yet Paul adds a modifier or sort of a caveat to this. The law is good, but then he's talking to believers here, Christians who are interacting with God's law. He says, if you use it lawfully, there's a right way to use God's good law, and there's a wrong way to use God's good law.
And I'll just tip my cap here. If you're going to use God's law as a tool or a weapon to beat people with, that's not a good use of the law. There is a good use, a lawful use of the law, but we'll talk about that.
There are ways that a person could misuse God's law and do damage to people. And we talked a little bit about that when we talked about false teaching, the damage to the conscience, the enslavement to the Christian conscience by improper use of God's law. And so the law of God must be rightly used and applied.
But what is the purpose of God's law? I want you to turn with me to Romans chapter 7. Go back quite a few pages there in the New Testament, Romans chapter 7. Once again, this topic covers far more than we could tackle in one sermon, so I'm going to do kind of a crash course here. I hope it's helpful. I trust it will be.
But as you're turning to Romans 7, so go to Romans 7, but I want you to keep one ear open here because I want to sort of catch us up on Paul's argument from chapter 3 all the way through chapter 6. I want to give us sort of a running start so when we land in Romans 7, it makes a little bit more sense. Romans 1 through 3, Paul is convicting the world of sin by using Old Testament law. He destroys every possible kind of person who could come to God's law and claim to be righteous.
He goes after the moralist, he goes after the pagan, he goes after the Jewish legalist, he goes after everybody, that all the world is accountable to God through his law. So Romans 1 through 3, it's the conviction of sin through the law. And he concludes that section in Romans 3, 19 and 20 by saying, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.
Important phrase, under the law, that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Now, nobody in the world is going to be able to do enough good or keep enough laws to be saved. It's impossible.
If you think you can get to Jesus, if you think you can get to heaven by doing good things and keeping enough laws, you will inevitably fail. Because the broken mechanism is not the law, the broken mechanism is the sinful heart that fails to keep the law. That's what's wrong.
The sin is the problem. Nobody's ever going to be good enough. Nobody's righteous.
And God's law proves that. God's law proves the sinfulness of our own hearts. Therefore, how do we get out of this problem? God must give a perfect righteousness as a gift so that we become acceptable to him.
Again, God requires a life of perfect righteousness and none of us can accomplish it. There's not a single person on planet earth in past, present, or future apart from Jesus Christ himself, there's not a single person who can provide a complete and perfect life of righteousness that is acceptable to God's sight. It is impossible for us to do.
Therefore, he receives the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. So Christ gives us, he lives his life on earth, he dies on the cross, he resurrects, and the righteousness of Jesus is acceptable to God the Father in his sight, and he takes that righteousness of Jesus and he credits that righteousness to us. And he regards Christ's righteousness as being ours and our sinful, filthy rags, our unrighteousness, he credits that and accounts that as belonging to Jesus and therefore Jesus dies to pay for that.
That is what is known as the great exchange. I receive his perfect righteousness, he receives my filthy rags, he dies paying for my sins, I live as a benefit of his righteousness. He has exchanged this for us.
Does that mean that I have, I now possess in and of myself righteousness? No, I'm not righteous. Does that mean that Jesus becomes sinful? No, Jesus is not sinful. This is a declaration, a crediting on our account.
The moment we receive the righteous life of Christ credited to us, God declares us righteous in his sight. And that declaration where he deems us righteous, that is called justification. We are justified.
Justified in his sight. How do we receive this gift? I mean, we're listening to this. This is an amazing gift.
I don't want these sinful rags. I hate my sin. I want the righteousness and I can't get it.
How do I get it? The Bible says this comes by means of our faith. The grounds of this justification is the righteousness of Christ, but the means by which I receive it is by faith. Romans 3 23 for we maintain that a man is justified, declared righteous by God, justified by faith apart from works of the law.
Now as soon as that happens, we enter into a new status in God's sight. We're no longer under the requirements of the law. Romans 6 14, we are now under grace.
Well, how are we under grace? Because everything we have for life now as believers has been given to us as a gift. It wasn't earned. It was a gift of grace.
By grace you have been saved through faith. It is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.
Not as a result of work so that we can't boast. We are debtors to this grace. Now this brings us all the way back to our question now.
What is the purpose then of the law? This brings us to this to the discussion in chapter 7 because again Paul's dealing with this issue of sin and grace and justification and salvation and he brings us into this discussion about the law. So Romans 7 he says, But if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another to him who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law having died to that by which we were bound so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter. And then Paul explains a little more here.
Verse 7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Because that's what the accusation is. That's what he's dealing with in 1 Timothy. Is the law sin? What does Paul say? May it never be.
On the contrary, I would not have come to no sin except through the law. For what I would have not known about covenant if the law had not said you shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.
For apart from the law, sin is dead. And I was once alive apart from the law, he says. But when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.
And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Stop right there. Now someday I will go verse by verse through all of that, okay? But for our purposes today, get these concepts in our minds here. Once we died in Christ, we died to the law.
Once we were born again in Christ, we were raised in grace. We see in verse 6 he says that we have been released from the law. We are no longer bound to the law.
Again, what does that mean? Does that mean the law is bad? Verse 7, Paul says, may it never be. There's nothing wrong with the law. The law is not the problem.
Rather, God's perfect law, it reveals the sin in our own hearts. That's why Paul is saying what he says. He says, I didn't even realize that I was sinning until the law said, you shall not covet.
All of a sudden I realized how covetous I was. It's not that the law came in and put sin into his heart. The law only revealed what was already there.
I've used this analogy before. Say you're going down the road here and you're just driving at your heart's content and you're going 65 miles an hour and you feel pretty good. As soon as you drive past a sign that says 35, all of a sudden the awareness of the transgression comes in and now you realize you're in sin.
You've been in sin the whole time, but the law reveals the sin and it actually aggravates the sinfulness of it. Because now every time you see that sign, you're going to go, I kind of want to go faster. And then as soon as you do go faster, your conscience convicts you.
I'm breaking the law. I'm breaking the law. And then you see an officer drive by and what do you do? You slow way down to 25 miles an hour, right? That's how the law works.
The law itself is fine. There's nothing wrong with the law. No, the problem is the sinfulness in our hearts.
And so the law, it reveals the sin in our hearts. It aggravates the sin in our hearts. It renders us totally helpless and it renders us to be ruined.
And it's at that point, once we're in that place with the law, it's at that point we realize that we need grace and we need to be saved. But again, God uses His law as a tool to convict us of our sin and expose the wickedness within, which is why Paul says elsewhere in Galatians 3.24, the law has become our tutor, our schoolmaster, our teacher, even our custodian. The law is the tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith.
Then he says, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Again, there is nothing wrong with the law. The law is holy and righteous and good.
Go back to 1 Timothy. So Paul declares in verse 8, but we know that the law is good. All God's people say amen, but then he qualifies the law is good if one uses it lawfully.
And then he elaborates. He restates in the next phrase what he's been teaching at that point for 25 years. Verse 9, realizing the fact that the law is not made for a righteous person.
Paul uses this word dikaios, which could be translated the just or the righteous. The law is not made for the just. The law is not made for the righteous.
Now, some scholars I was reading this week, some scholars are scratching their heads and talking about whether or not Paul is only referring to a person, a righteous person who lives ethically. Is he talking about general righteousness? But I think if you look at the context of where we are in verses 8 through 10, and then also in verse 11, we're seeing here, Paul is setting up a distinction between the law and now the gospel in verse 11. And so the context is clearly dealing with law and gospel justification by faith.
So I believe he's speaking of a person who has been declared righteous by God through justification. The law is not made for those who have been declared just by God. The New Testament is very clear that justified believers are no longer under the requirements or judgments of God's law.
That's Romans 6, 14, and 15. That's Galatians 5, 18. That's 1 Corinthians 9, 20, and on and on and on and on and on.
We are not justified by law, Romans 3, 20. Galatians 3, 3 says we're not sanctified by law. In this way, we realize the fact that the law is not made for a righteous or justified person.
Well, who is it for then? Why do we have to even deal with law if it's not for those who have been justified by faith? Paul is going to explain and continue in the second half of verse 9. Look at the second half of verse 9 and then into verse 10. Who is the law for then? He says the law is for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching. At first glance, you might think this just looks like a long list of sinful behaviors, but rather it's actually more meticulous and calculated than that.
Paul begins here, this little section, with three pairs, three pairs of words. He notes that the law was made for the first pair, those who are lawless and rebellious. That's the first pair.
Lawless translates anomos. So anomos is the word for law. Anomos is essentially a person who lives as though there is no law.
Ever met someone who lives as though there's no rules? No, your laws don't apply to me. And they just do whatever they want. Maybe that was you.
Certainly on some level that was me before I came to Christ. But this is a person who does whatever they want. And in doing so, in living without law, lawlessly, they become rebellious to God's law.
You see that? So they're lawless and therefore rebellious. They're essentially making themselves to be their own God by disregarding God's law and his character. And this is essentially a violation of the first commandment.
You shall have no other gods before me. See, a lawless person lives as though there is no law because they themselves believe that they are above God's law. Violates the first commandment.
The law is also made for the second grouping here, the ungodly and sinners. The ungodly and sinners. This word for ungodly could also be rendered wicked or impious.
In their ungodliness and sinfulness, they defile them, the second and third commandments of the law as well, which is against idolatry and blasphemy. And so in their ungodliness, they're setting up idols in their own heart. And in their blasphemy, they're sinning against the name of the Lord.
And so this second pair violates the second and third commandment. And then finally, the third pair, they are unholy and profane. Unholy and profane.
New Testament scholar William Hendrickson notes that these two vices render them careless in their religious duties to God. The fourth commandment says, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, but the sinner profanes the Sabbath worship and renders that to be unholy. And so in these three pairings right here in the beginning, we see that the sinner here is in violation of the first table of the Ten Commandments.
The first table is the commandments 1, 2, 3, 4 that are set up to honor God. The first four commandments are our relationship to God. And so in doing these things, they fail to love God or to honor Him.
And the law exposes and convicts the sinner for this, but he doesn't stop there. The law also exposes the sins committed in violation of the second table of the Ten Commandments, those who are given for the sake of our relationship to our neighbor. The fifth commandment says, honor your father and mother, but those who sin against God's law include those who kill their fathers and mothers.
Now this is very extreme, but Paul's making a point here. The ultimate end of dishonoring your parents is to commit patricide or matricide. And so we understand that that violates that commandment.
Then he says next, the law is made for murderers. That reflects which commandment? The sixth one, you shall not murder. Verse 10, he includes two terms that deal with sexual sin, immoral men and homosexuals.
Immoral translates the word pornos, which you can hear where that word leads us to. Pornos refers to any kind of sexual sin, but certainly it includes both fornication and adultery. This word for homosexuals is in the Greek, it's arsenokoites, which literally refers to men who share the marriage bed.
That's literally what that word means. Now this is a violation of the sacred sexual union that it's designed for a husband and a wife. And so both of these terms fall under the sin addressed in the seventh commandment, which prohibits any kind of sexual activity outside of the marriage covenant.
So if you commit adultery, you're disobeying this commandment. If you commit fornication, you disobey the commandment. Any other kind of sexual deviancy, you've disobeyed the commandment.
So that's why he says you shall not commit adultery. Next, he deals with kidnappers. Literally in the Greek, it's man-stealers, those who enslave people.
It's the worst kind of thievery. You know, you could steal someone's wallet and they have to just make a couple of phone calls, but you steal a person's child? That's a whole other level of debauchery and sin. And that's what he talks about here, those who would kidnap or steal other people, whereby in the eighth commandment, he declares, you shall not steal.
And then we have liars and perjurers. That's a violation of the ninth commandment against bearing false witness. Now, in this list here, Paul doesn't specifically allude to the tenth commandment about coveting, but he extends here that the law is in use for whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.
Now, that would certainly include coveting, but it goes even beyond coveting. It's almost as if Paul is saying here, I would just say coveting here, but it's actually coveting and then whatever else. It's almost as if it's like an ellipsis, dot, dot, dot.
I'm just going to keep on going. Whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, that's what the law is for. Issues of conscience, sins of the heart, whatever it may be.
And so the point is very clear now. The law is not given as a way for the righteous to attain or improve their standing with God. Rather, that is what the false teachers are claiming here.
But 1st Timothy 4.3 says they were advocating for restrictions on marriage, which is celibacy, as well as abstaining from foods. This is Jewish legalism. The false teachers are advocating for legalism.
They're creating these laws that they're demanding that people keep. But salvation and justification do not come through law keeping, through Torah observance. Salvation comes by God's grace through faith in Christ.
And so the law is given to reveal our sinfulness, convict the sinner, and render us spiritually dead in God's sight. Again, the law is the tutor to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. See, Paul's ministry did not focus on preaching law keeping to believers.
That's not the focus of this ministry either. To just take all the Old Testament laws and bind you to them to merely keep the obedience of those specific commands. Now, to the sinner, yes, the law creates the awareness of sin.
But sound or healthy teaching consists in the right understanding and application of both the law and, verse 11, the glorious gospel of our blessed God. Because where the law brought conviction of sin and death, the gospel brought forgiveness of sin and new life. Now, does this mean that Christians no longer care about the law? We just say, well, it's not for us.
Don't worry about it. Is that what we do? Not at all. Not at all.
Second Timothy 3.16 says that all scripture is breathed out by God. All scripture, even and including the law. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
And so the Holy Spirit who has written God's law on our hearts at regeneration, He uses it to instruct us. So the law is still useful for us. The Old Testament commands are still useful for us.
Even the ones that we deem to be obscure, still useful for us. But what has changed? What's changed is the believer's relationship to the law. We are not under the law to be judged and condemned by it.
Rather instead, Romans 7.6 says that we serve in newness of the Spirit. We apply the principles of God's law as we learn obedience. What is that? What are you talking about, Nate? What does this refer to? Let me give you just a couple of examples.
We are not bound to the law that says do not murder. Well, why? Because we are bound to the law of love. We pursue love.
The command of Christ, love one another as I have loved you, so you love one another. That's actually a higher law than you shall not murder. You shall not murder just means don't kill somebody.
But that does not include loving them, right? That just prohibits the act of sin. But Jesus says you are to love one another, which goes beyond the prohibition and says not just don't kill them, but you are to love them. There's a higher obedience.
We don't focus on not stealing. Why? Because our law, the law that's given to us in the law of Christ is to give and to be generous. It's a hard attitude to be generous and to give to other people and to serve them.
Now, by giving to other people and being generous, you're not going to steal, you see? But the application of that law is different now. There's a whole other thing attached to that. Our affections for God and for others are higher.
I'm not just going to not steal. I'm going to love you. I'm going to give to you because that obeys Christ.
We don't stress Sabbath keeping. We don't keep Sabbath. Well, why do I say that? Well, because technically, according to the law, the Sabbath is on Saturday.
The Christians have always worshiped on Sunday. We choose a day and we say this is the day we want to set aside for the Lord. But there are some who worship the Lord on Sunday night or Saturday night or Friday morning, whatever it may be.
We're not bound to Sabbath law, but rather we are bound to the commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and worship Him every day. Our spiritual worship, Romans 12, is that we're conforming our minds, transforming our minds into His wisdom and His knowledge and His likeness. So you see, believers, our application of law is different.
We're not under law. We're under grace. And so we walk and we live in that grace and our consciences are liberated.
We are freed from the law and we're free to obey Him in joy. It's a whole different relationship, and yet false teachers will always use the law as a weapon to enslave people. But for teachers like Paul and Timothy, he says the goal of their instruction is love.
There it is, from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Now, how is it that love is ministered to people? Well, Paul says in verse 11 that part of his stewardship that he's been entrusted with is by declaring the glorious gospel of the blessed God. That's where it begins.
Because if you think you're going to come to Jesus or come and go to heaven through law-keeping, through ritual obedience, you'll never experience grace. And if you don't understand the gospel, you'll never understand grace. You'll never understand what God has saved you from and what He's saved you to.
What is this gospel? Well, we understand that the law brings in sin. That all of us are guilty before God because of our sinfulness. All of us have violated God's laws.
And if you actually read the Ten Commandments, you'll find that if you apply it rightly, we've broken all ten. We've broken every law. I never killed anybody.
What did Jesus say? If you've had any kind of bitterness or anger toward your brother in your heart, it's the same thing in God's eyes. Is it the same in terms of consequence on earth? No, it's not the same in terms of consequence on earth. But in terms of your standing before God, if you say in your heart, I hate that person, you're guilty.
So we're guilty of sin in every possible way, and yet what is the good news of the gospel? The good news is that Jesus, who is truly God, truly man, the perfect Son of righteousness, has come and lived on earth and lived a life that we couldn't live. He's lived in our place and then given His life up on the cross and died in our place. And the requirements of the law have been satisfied in Jesus.
The wrath of God against the sinner has been satisfied in Jesus. And so therefore, when He dies, the penalty for our sins die with Him. He's buried in the ground.
He rises the third day to bring new life to believers, and that resurrection, that resurrection power, that's what's been given to us to live righteously for God. You're no longer under the damnation of law when you come to Christ by faith. You're now walking, you're living, you're breathing His grace every day.
Romans 8.1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. You're not in a place where God is condemning you eternally anymore. Rather, we are called to love Him and love other people.
And we're enabled and empowered to do that because His resurrection, the power that raised Christ from the dead, is dwelling in you now. You don't live your life enslaved to law-keeping. You don't limit your kinds of foods because of ceremonial reasons.
All these mandates of the law, the observing of days and holidays and different things, all the Old Testament, the sign of circumcision, all these things, none of these laws are applicable to you for obedience anymore. But rather, you're under grace, and the Spirit of God will use all of His Word to bring about conviction of sin, genuine repentance, and the fruit of obedience in your life. We are not under law.
We are under grace, and we hold to this glorious gospel of the blessed God. I love that phrase, the concept of this glorious gospel. And we're going to spend next week talking about that glorious gospel.
So if you're convicted of sin because of this discussion today, you have to be here next week. You have to. Get here early.
We fill up fast. Next week is the blessed gospel of the glorious God. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we're so grateful to You that You are a God of grace, that there is nothing wrong with Your law. In fact, there's everything right with Your law. I love Your law.
It is my meditation all the day, David says, where we look and we see the reflection of Your perfect character in the law. We also understand the nature of our own sinfulness through the law, and yet the law functions as the tutor, the schoolmaster, to point us to Jesus. And we come to Your Son, O Lord, by faith.
We see His sacrifice for us. We see Him on the cross paying the penalty for sins. We see Him dying in our place.
We see Him rising again from the grave to bring new life. And we accept that by faith. We receive that by faith.
And the Bible teaches that when that happens, we are found in Christ. What a wonderful reality that we are no longer under that law to be bound by it, and yet we're walking and living by Your grace. And this is all because of Your glorious gospel.
And so thank You, Lord, for not only giving us this gospel message, but thank You for giving us Your Son, the Son who accomplished the work of salvation. And thank You for giving us the Spirit who binds and applies all of these promises to our lives, who regenerates us from the inside out, who indwells us and causes us to walk in Your ways. Just thank You so much for this wonderful blessing.
Help us, O Lord, to guard this glorious gospel, not to be led astray into law-keeping, ritual obedience, legalism, and things like that, but rather let us to be joyful recipients of grace who walk by this kind of obedience, O Lord. Let us joyfully follow You, Spirit-filled, bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Help us, O Lord, because we love You and we want to do the things that please You.
Be merciful, be gracious to us, Lord. We know that You are in Christ, and so we love You in this way. In Jesus' name, amen.