Why Do People Break the Very Law They Preach So Strongly About?

Sunday, 13th September 2009

Over the past 2 days, I have been blogging about the fact that it was Paul, the apostle appointed by the resurrected Christ, who on numerous occasions in his epistles, tells us that the Law has been superseded by Grace.

Some preachers get very uncomfortable when they read passages such as Rom 7 and Gal 4. You mean to say the Ten Commandments, the very bedrock of what defines God's standards, no longer apply to Christians? I remember feeling extremely disturbed when I first heard sermons like that myself. Being a Christian since I was 12, these types of messages went against the very foundation of my faith and truth be told, I was shaken.

It is probably because of this that many theologians rationalised by subdividing the Law into 3 parts:
(i) Moral -- represented by the Ten Commandments
(ii) Civil -- conduct and behaviour towards others
(iii) Ceremonial -- the washing of utensils etc.

They argue that Jesus, via His establishing the New Covenant, has done away with the ceremonial laws. Through the courts, the civil laws are replaced. But the moral law remains.

But therein lies a problem.

Firstly, God did not subdivide His laws; man did. James says in Js 2:10 that anyone who broke any part of them was guilty of breaking them all. This is because the Old Covenant was meant to be one composite whole, one package deal.

Secondly, let's study the following passage:

Romans 7
An Illustration From Marriage
1Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
4So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Here, Paul uses the illustration from marriage to tell us that we, now being married to Jesus, so to speak, should not have anymore dealings with our previous spouse, the law.

Those same theologians would argue that the law in this passage refers to the civil and ceremonial law, and not the moral law. But let's read on...

7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."
8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead.
9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

Maybe the Holy Spirit could foresee that the church down through the ages would attempt to make such a distinction between moral, civil and ceremonial. So Paul gave an example about what he meant by "the law" by making reference to one of the Ten Commandments -- "Thou shall not covet!"

Paul also mentions in 2 Cor 3:7 about "the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones”. Those of us who are familiar with the Bible will know that only the Ten Commandments were written and engraved on stone tablets. The civil and ceremonial laws were dictated to Moses. Hence, those who preach strongly on the Ten Commandments do not realise that they are ministers of death, killing you softly with those words :-)

Thirdly, how many of us Christians observe the Sabbath today, by not working between 6pm on Friday and 6pm on Saturday? Some have argued that it is a ceremonial law, but hey, it was one of the Ten Commandments. If God had meant for His laws to be subdivided into moral, civil and ceremonial, should He not have placed the Sabbath elsewhere? Unless, it was because He knew that there would come a time when man would arbitrarily subdivide them for Him that He deliberately placed this commandment amongst the other Nine?

Paul says in 1 Cor 15:56 that the strength of sin is the law, so the irony is that the more we try to keep them, the more we end up breaking them! In Rom 7, he wrote that he sincerely did not want to covet, but he ended up coveting!

Is it therefore not surprising that Rev Peter Koh committed intellectual theft when he plaigiarised that antinomian article, or when we read of that church elder who was supposed to rehabilitate prostitutes but ended up sleeping with them instead.

Dear friends, via the blood of Christ, God has put an end to the Old Covenant and superseded it with the New Covenant. Jesus even made that clear in one of His parables where He said that new wine should not be placed in old wineskins. Now His laws are written on our hearts. It is via His grace that we can live the victorious and abundant Christian life, and not via trying to keep the Ten Commandments. Amen?