A Theological Outline of Grace and The Law

When we speak about The Law, we can be referring to a few places in The Bible. The Law, or The Torrah can refer to the entire Old Testament, the first five books of the Old Testament (also known as the Pentateuch) or the laws and commandments that God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai after delivering them out of Egypt. I intend to write about The Law as the last option, the laws and commandments that God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai, specifically located throughout the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The Law as a Response to Grace

When God gave laws to the Patriarchs or to Israel, it was always after he had extended incredible grace to them. God always leads with grace. He first calls Abraham and promises to make him a great nation, prospering all that he does, protecting him and his family so that through them God could bless the entire world. Nothing is required of Abraham except that he believe. After a lifetime of blessing, his flocks and herds having grown so large that he and his nephew had to part ways as the land would not support their number, and having been victorious in battle against five kings, God reaffirms his promise with the qualification "walk before me faithfully and be blameless." (Genesis 17:1) At this point there is no explanation of what 'faithfully' and 'blameless' means, except that Abraham and his descendants must continue to trust and obey The Lord. "Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Note that it wasn't Abraham's obedience to The Law, but his trust in God that made him righteous. God's call to obedience came after he had been accepted as righteous.

Many years later when Abraham's descendants, the ancient Israelites were slaves in Egypt God heard their cry and rose up the prophet Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. God performed incredible miracles in Egypt and through the desert, delivering his chosen people out of captivity, through the Red Sea, and kept them safe through the desert. This is the context of Israel receiving The Law, God had just saved them and had spent weeks caring for their needs, not because they were good people or obedient or that God could benefit from having them, but because of his grace and compassion for them. He makes a covenant with them and says that He will be their God and they will be His people. He was going to literally dwell with ancient Israel as they wandered in the desert. They lived in tents, God would live in a tent (the Tabernacle) and travel with them. The Law was given, not to make them righteous, but to instruct them in how to be like their God, how to imitate Him and properly reflect Him to the nations.

Following The Law is always a response to grace, not a prerequisite. Grace is given, and then we, having received God's grace, will naturally seek to imitate God. The only proper response to God's grace is personal sanctity, to live a holy life. As God draws us near to himself the natural reaction should be to imitate His character. Holiness is the human appropriation of God's grace. God's laws are not intended to restrict life but to instruct God's people in the "paths of righteousness." 

The Law as Casuistic

We often think of The Law as a long confusing list of do's and don'ts with consequences listed for disobedience. The ancient Israelites had a different understanding of The Law though. The Laws found in Exodus and Deuteronomy follow a pattern of law that was common in the Ancient Near East wherein a serious of principles for living are given (The Ten Commandments) and then a much longer list of explanations and practical applications is given afterwards (The Law of the Covenant). This 'casuistic' understanding of The Law is very different than how we normally understand it.

Many of the specific laws don't make much sense to us today. Why should it matter if you mix different types of threads when making clothes, what's so bad about pork, and why is there a specific law about not boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk? There are answers to these and many other questions that make sense if you understand the historical and cultural context of the Ancient Near East. The practical application of God's principles in the fifteenth century BC Sinai may seem a little strange in twenty-first century AD North America. If God were to give a similar list of practical applications of his principles for how to live many of them would seem equally foreign to the ancient Israelites.

Moses gave Ten Commandments, ten principles for living. Jesus summarized these ten, and the entirety of The Law in two commandments, love The Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. However strange we think the specific practical applications for ancient Israel may be, this is, and has always been, what The Law was all about.

The Law as Doable

It was impossible to keep The Law perfectly, as Paul laments in Romans 7:15 "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do," however The Law included provisions for what to do when you couldn't keep The Law. It is popular to say that God gave The Law only so that He could show everyone that they couldn't meet His standard to highlight the need of a savior. This was indeed part of what The Law did but it is my firm belief that many ancient Israelites did manage to keep The Law, not in the sense that they did it all perfectly, but in the sense that they kept the spirit of The Law by struggling honestly and earnestly in the sight of God, repenting, falling, and repenting again in much the same way that Christians do today. The Old Testament says that Abraham was considered righteous because of his faith even though he did not obey God fully and that David was a man after God's own heart even though he was a murderer and adulterer. God speaks through the prophets about saving a 'righteous remnant of Israel' a portion of the population would return to follow The Law and were not corrupted even though the nation as a whole was. (1 Kings 19:18, Isaiah 10:20-22)

The purpose of The Law was not to achieve righteousness, that had always been a gift that was given through faith in God. The Law kept you walking with God, provided forgiveness of sins via the grace of Christ through the sacrificial system, a precursor to Christ's sacrifice made efficacious by Christ's sacrifice to come.

I think one of the major issues that many Jews faced was that once Jesus had inaugurated the New Covenant there was now a division. Previously relationship with God and forgiveness for sins was mediated through The Law, specifically the sacrificial system, then Jesus dies for the sins of the world and the event to which the entire sacrificial system had been pointing to all along has occurred! As a devout Jew, what do you do? Do you continue with the sacrificial system given by Moses or do you say, along with the author of the Book of Hebrews, that the blood of Christ is superior to the blood of animal sacrifices and that his sacrifice is final? A division took place. Jesus' sacrifice and all that he accomplished could be no more contained by The Law than new wine in old wineskins (Matthew 9:15-17). Those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah continued in the grace of God under a new form that was not bound by The Law, those who rejected Christ stayed with the sacrificial system, not realizing that it had just been fulfilled. I suspect some stayed with the sacrificial system out of ignorance, although many messengers were sent to the Jews all over the world in the first century, and others stayed with the sacrificial system because they believed that The Law itself was the way by which we are made righteous (legalism). Paul explains in his Epistle to the Galatians that The Law was given to Israel as a sort of tutor, a temporary teacher and guardian until such time as the promised savior had come.

To those who held to legalism The Law did become impossible, because they didn't understand what it was pointing to, what it was for, or how righteousness was achieved. I think this is why Jesus criticized the religious leaders of his day by warning "do not try to take the speck out of your brother's eye until you have removed the log from your own eye," (Matthew 7:1-5 paraphrased) and "[the Pharisees] strain out a gnat but swallow a camel" (Matthew 23:24). To those who rely on works, The Law is impossible, it is death. To those who rely on God, they recognized Christ from a distance through The Law and were justified according to their faith in their God, but when Christ came and was crucified for their sins they recognized him and stepped from The Law, which up until that point was made efficacious by Christ, to faith in Christ Himself!

The Law as a Fence of Protection

Obeying God's principles for living will naturally bring about good (or at least better) results. We recognize this in a natural sense. We all reap what we sow. Those who live with integrity will reap the long term benefits of that integrity, those who live lying and turning on others when it is to their advantage will have to contend with the chaos and instability they have sown for themselves. Being transformed in our hearts and minds to be more like God puts the world and our lives into perspective, we worry less, become more joyful, and care more about others.

God also gave The Law in such a way that his people would not fall victim to illness. The laws concerning dietary restrictions and the division of 'clean' and 'unclean' in Leviticus established effective rules for sanitation in an ancient society that did not understand bacteria or infection.

When God gave The Law at Mount Sinai it was more than just a guidebook for how to live, it was the boundaries of how to live in God's presence. God wanted to dwell with his people, to live among them, but He couldn't do that if his people were actively doing the things that drove them away from God's presence. The Lord is a holy God, his people needed to be holy or his presence would destroy them. You can't live in God's presence while you are worshiping Ba'al, or sacrificing your children in the fire, or oppressing your fellow image bearers, or refusing to care for the widow and orphan. When God's people reflect God's heart they are safe and secure in his presence. He is with them, He fights their battles, He leads them. When God's people go their own way they are like sheep wandering away from the pasture, they have trouble finding good food, they run into predators, fall into pits, or get stuck in bad terrain. This isn't what God wants for them but that is what happens when you live outside of God's presence. God always welcomes them back and intentionally pursues His people, even when they do not want Him, He sends them prophets to call them back and goes out of his way to give them grace over and over again so they will remember Him and return to Him.

In Deuteronomy Moses summarizes The Law and declares blessing if Israel follows The Law and curses if they disobey. The blessings are what happen when you stay in the pasture, you get lots of food, clean water, the shepherd protects you, you have a good life. The curses are what happen if you leave the pasture, you get lost, you get hungry, you get attacked by wolves, and the shepherd can't protect you. Pressing the analogy further it could be said that sometimes, when a specific sheep is especially prone to wandering, a shepherd may intentionally break its leg so that it learns to trust and rely on the shepherd. Not all hardship from disobedience is specifically a punishment from God, but sometimes God does intentionally bring about consequences so that we will return to Him and learn to trust Him. In in the case of God's chosen nation the language is stronger, God will punish them if they refuse to follow The Law. Israel wandered from God often, and when He did intentionally bring the curses of the covenant upon them it was for their redemption.

Finally The Law also protects us from becoming abhorrent to God to the point where he unleashes terrible judgement. God used Israel as a tool of judgement against The Canaanites because of the outcry raised against them. Oppression, 'holy' prostitution, murder, horrific child sacrifice, and worshiping the detestable god Molek. When a people commit such egregious sins long enough God passes judgement on them to stop the atrocities and give what they have to more worthy stewards. Israel, as recorded throughout the historical books of the Old Testament did not keep The Law and eventually became even worse than the Canaanites so God used the Assyrians and the Babylonians to destroy Israel, but even during the time of wrath and judgement God preserved the remnant of Israel that walked faithfully and obediently, eventually returning them from exile.

The Law as Covenant 

The Law also needs to be understood through the lens of covenant. Covenants, in the Ancient Near East, were binding legal agreements made between two parties. When a lesser power wanted to swear fealty to a greater power a number of agreements would be made and the lesser party would pass through a series of animals that had been cut in two, a declaration of "if I break my word then may I become as these animals are now."

God makes a covenant with Abraham. The agreement is that God has chosen him to inherit the Promise Land, become the father of many nations and that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through his line. God would protect him, care for him, and prosper him. Abraham didn't have any obligations put upon him and it was God who went through the severed animals, not Abraham! (Genesis 15) This was an incredible confirmation of God's promises to Abraham.

Years later God makes another covenant, this time with Abraham's descendants, the ancient Israelites after having delivered them out of Egypt and leading them through the desert in spectacular and miraculous fashion. The agreement this time is that The Lord will be their God and they will be His people, His special inheritance out of all the nations of the earth, a holy nation. The condition was that Israel, as a nation, needed to become like God, they needed to be holy and adopt God's character by following the laws and commandments that God had given them. If they obeyed the covenant then God would bless them (fight their battles, bring prosperity, etc) , if they disobeyed the covenant than God would curse them (fight against them, take away their prosperity, etc).

God always keeps his promises and his promises do not nullify each other, they build upon and fulfill each other and they point forward to a time in the future. Abraham believed in God's promise, but he died before he could see it fulfilled. He had recieved a son in his old age, a miracle from God, but he only owned a burial plot, not the land itself, and his family consisted of one descendant. God was faithful though, he cared for Abraham's line and made them into the nation of Israel.

The covenant at Mount Sinai did not overwrite or undo the covenant God made with Abraham, it fulfilled it (partially). God had promised Abraham the land, now He was going to give it to Abraham's descendants and turn them into the nation that would bless all peoples of the earth. They were, after-all, inheritors of God's promise to Abraham. God would come to dwell with them, first in the Tabernacle, later in the Temple.

The nation of Israel failed to keep the covenant but God never failed to uphold his part. It didn't matter how many times they turned away to worship the detestable gods of the Canaanites, every time they repented God would fight for them and prosper them. Even after they had become completely corrupt and the nation was carried off into captivity God preserved the remnant of Israel who had remained true to him and protected and prospered them in captivity and then brought them back from Exile to rebuild anew.

The new covenant that God makes with all people through Jesus follows in the same vein as the other covenants, God, being the greater power, has passed through the parted animals having shed his own blood and broken his own body. He will forgive sins and restore fellowship with all who put their faith in Him. The New Covenant did not overwrite or undo the Old Covenant, it fulfilled it! God dwells, no longer in a building, but within our hearts through The Holy Spirit. The entire sacrificial system had been fulfilled by Christ's sacrifice. Jesus both fulfilled Israel's obligation to The Law by living a perfect life in their stead and also bore the punishment for Israel (and all other peoples') failure to live by The Law. Abraham's covenant was also fulfilled in that now many people from all the nations of the earth call Abraham 'father' as they have inherited the same faith in the same God as he! This is how his line was to bless all the peoples of the earth! The Bible says that the non-jewish believers have been grafted in to Israel, (Romans 11:11-31) and so we have become the holy nation, the priesthood of all believers, the special inheritance of The Lord. Yet as great as the New Covenant is, it also points to the future for its complete fulfillment! We, like Abraham, and like ancient Israel, look forward to a time when God will give us rest and a far off country to call our own. He will be our God and we will be His people. Just as God called Abraham to walk blameless before him and just as He called Israel to be holy, Jesus calls all people to be holy as our Father in Heaven is holy and makes has an even higher goal for what holiness means than what was originally given at Mount Sinai! ("You have heard it said... but I say to you...") God's grace has not changed, the conditions to receive God's grace have not changed, what changes with the New Covenant is that instead of being guided by external laws God puts the laws into our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and enables us to do as the Law requires, to love The Lord our God with all our heart mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves in any time and place we find ourselves in.

Finished Augustine's Confessions ... Finally

I finished the book. It took me a very long time. For any future books written by ancient persons I am going to buy a copy of their works that have been translated into modern English. I was able to mostly translate the free King James version of confessions but it was slow work. I'm writing to get my ideas out so some of them haven't been developed yet.

There was a lot in Confessions that I have to think about and digest. Augustine must have been a brilliant man, firing on all cylinders. Confessions is full of rhetoric, poetry, and prayer woven together and each of these strands requires intentional thought to process. I wonder if I caught even half of what he was saying between my barely readable translation and the complexity of his thoughts. My brother is currently doing his thesis on Augustine and often brings up that he was not writing as a philosopher, which I don't fully understand either.

Here are a few things that stuck out to me on my first read-through.

God's truth is big enough to contain many worldly truths

When God speaks he speaks truly and he speaks outside of time. We who live within time and have the Spirit of God living within us will read the words of the Bible or hear God's speech in a sermon or delivered specifically to our minds within our times and circumstances. Some traditions will understand the Bible to say one thing, and other traditions will take the same passages and say they mean something else. It is possible that both are correct. Augustine cautions us from saying "your interpretation of what Moses revelation is wrong, my interpretation is correct!" Moses, great prophet and chosen of God that he was, may have had either mine or your understanding or a different one altogether according to his time and experience or God could have given him a full revelation where he comprehended both and many other understandings beyond his time that are all true. We should therefore approach the Scriptures, and each other, with humility.

Interactions between The Trinity outside of time and us His time-bound creations

In the last chapter he talked about how when God gives us a vision we see as God sees, outside of time. When we speak by the power of the Holy Spirit we speak as God speaks, outside of time because it is actually God speaking through us. Something about this concept caught me off guard, it was visceral.

Weaving analogy and poetry in his interpretation of Scripture

There were a few times when he was explaining a theological truth that he related to Scripture, not just as a footnote, but as a poetic commentary on another part of Scripture. These passages are beautiful and I wish I could one day know the Scriptures well enough to do likewise.

His mother's story

He spends a long time talking about Monica, his mother, and her incredible faith and ceaseless prayers that probably saved his soul. The story is like that of the prodigal son where in his youth Augustine delighted in doing evil and had become a notorious and relentless debater fully given over to his passions and base desires. His mother followed him and continuously cried allowed before The Lord that He would save her son. Augustine sneaked away and traveled to Rome by ship and she came after him. The Lord had confirmed to her that her prayers would be answered but like Hannah before The Lord in the temple or the persistent widow she would not stop petitioning The Lord to save her son. The Lord heard her, and did save him and all the talents and intelligence he had used for evil and for himself were put in their proper usage to give glory to God and he became such a beacon of light in his time that he feared to travel lest the cities all make him their bishop. The amount of joy and relief Monica must have felt at having heard that he son had finally found Jesus and that his heart had been transformed...

The Conversion of Augustine

I read Augustine's conversion experience tonight (Confessions, chapter 8). I felt a strong connection as I read him. He agonized over his conversion. Being fully unsatisfied with his life and many achievements and having just talked with a lesser educated friend about his own Christian experience he became troubled, feverish even, in spirit so much so that his friend Alypius was alarmed and followed him out into the garden where Augustine grappled with his will but found himself unable to follow Christ.

He wrestled with his logic and his long history of lust and revelry pulling at him and he ran and hid under a fig tree weeping until he heard a child next door singing "take and read, take and read." He wondered at this because he was not aware of any game or song wherein these words would be sung or who could have sung them and took it as none other than a divine command, rushed over to the Book of the Apostle, and read the first thing he saw,

"Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh." 

Romans 13:13-15

Upon reading this he felt as though his soul were filled with light and he turned from his sin. Alypius so amazed did likewise. They went to tell his mother and she leaped for joy praising God. She had spent years and years praying, weeping, and lamenting for her son and now her prayers were answered.

This story plays out like the scene of a movie but it is true.

I am struck by several points as they align with my own experience. Augustine agonized over his conversion. I have also agonized, not over my conversion because that happened when I was very young, but at specific points in time when I was called to trust Jesus with a specific part of my life that I was holding on to. The struggle of trying to be good enough while realizing that I could not be good on my own terms, that was rough. God was calling me to give up trying to be good enough which went against so much of how I was raised. I could never be good enough, and while it was nice that I wanted to not burden Christ with my sin and just try to take care of things on my own that wasn't how it was supposed to work and my holding on to 'trying to be good' was actually becoming a real hindrance to the work Christ was doing in me. I, like Augstine, ended up curled up in a ball crying. I didn't have a fig tree to hide under though, just the long dark emptiness of the Saskatchewan night sky out on the grid road just outside of Caronport.

I did not hear God speaking to me at that time, disguised as another voice or not but I am convinced I did hear God (or an angel from God) speak audibly in a similar manner to Augustine when I was working as a flagman for a summer. I had been trying to witness to my co-worker, another new guy like me, and we were often paired together. I was a rough man, but honest, and with integrity. We would sometimes speak about spiritual things. I explained my faith in Jesus, he his 'Happy Hunting Grounds'. He tried to introduce me to some stuff he thought I would like (super cheesy Christianese movies) and things he thought might expand my mind out of the box I was living in (rap music). I, in turn, suggested he read the Book of Proverbs as it was about wisdom and living well, something anyone of any faith could benefit from. I listened to and studied rap music. He never read Proverbs. I prayed for him, spoke with him, challenged him as our relationship allowed, he was polite but nothing would sink in. Then one day just before he left we were getting the work truck ready for the day when a song came on the radio and it was as if I had half entered a different reality. The lyrics of this song "Saving William" were a love letter from a father to his son about how he was sending him messengers and love and gifts but he would have none of it but his father still loved him and he would keep trying. I was stunned and wondered about the song all day long. I went him that day and looked it up online. The song doesn't exist but I heard it clear as day and knew it was a confirmation of God's love for this man and of God's working through me to show him his love.

As for Augustine's mother, I have not lived long enough to pray with unceasing tears and anguish of heart to experience the triumphant joy that erupted in her soul, but I can imagine what it must have been like.

Ways to the Father

It seems to me that there exists a paradox in that there are both many ways and only one way in how we come to know God. On the one hand, as a Christian, I believe as fundamental and completely truthful Jesus' words that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody comes to the Father but through Him. (John 14:6). On the other hand I am convinced that Jesus will come to each of us a little differently according to how we were created, our time in history, and our own experience. There is only one Jesus and He is the only way to know the father, but we all see and relate to him differently.

To be clear, I am not saying that other religions and unchristian ideas are also methods to come to the Father, only that everyone who does come to the Father comes through Christ and that this journey of going through Christ looks differently for each person because Christ relates to each of us according to who, where, and when we are. I don't think this is an especially novel or strange idea but it has been my observation that many who call themselves Christians interact with other Christians as though it were.

For many of us we came to know Christ in childhood through the example of our parents and the community of our local church. Others came to believe because of a sermon or a message spoken by a Christian preacher that struck them to the core. Others came to believe not because of their parents or a sermon but by being loved by the church community. Still others came to believe because of a powerful spiritual experience, others by witnessing a miracle, others by simply reading The Holy Bible, and some by other means. All of us start the journey of faith in Jesus at different spots and the journey itself also looks different according to who, where, and when we are. Some are called to be preachers, politicians, or philanthropists but not prostitutes. Others to be servants, song writers, or soldiers, but not sorcerers. Many are called to be mothers, martyrs or mostly ordinary but not murderers. Once again this shouldn't be a novel or strange idea, Paul's explanation of the spiritual gifts shows us that we are many members of one body, each of us given diverse and unique tasks suitable to the diverse and unique roles we all play. (1 Cor 12:12-27)

There are some who say that every Christian *must* possess a specific talent or gift or experience (such as being able to speak in tongues) but the wider body of the faith knows that they are mistaken and we try to love and work with them as best we can, and life goes on.

Where I see Christians acting is though this could be a lie (from the Devil no less) is when other Christians relate to God differently. Some of us naturally relate to God when we are reading the Bible. This is often held as the gold standard in Evangelical Christianity for how everyone should relate to God because the Bible is God's written word to us. It is God breathed, reliable, unchangeable, tangible, Spirit filled, living and active, sharper than a two edged sword dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow, judging the thoughts and intentions of the heart (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:12). The Bible is extremely important for the Christian faith but as important and grounding as it is, I am convinced that many Christians naturally relate to God better through other means. Music, for example, often makes Christians feel a close connection to God. Art or symbolism is another example as is simply being alone in God's creation perhaps beholding a mountain or the ocean or a sunset or a star-filled sky. Some of us naturally relate to and love to focus on Jesus (obviously) but the more charismatic among us naturally relate to and love to focus on the Holy Spirit while our Catholic and East Orthodox brothers and sisters have a greater elevation of The Father. I think this is only natural because all of us are created differently and have had centuries of the forces of culture and theological thought put the currents of today into movement.

Whatever activity, image, or frame of mind makes us feel a connection with God can, in the context of faith in Jesus, become an anchor in the life of the Christian, a spiritual discipline whereby the believer knows how to put him or her self into a position to better focus on communing with their God. As the Christian matures on their journey in Christ new (and I believe more traditional) ways of feeling a connection with God will take root and the things that have made them feel a connection in the past may fade or disappear as the Lord leads each of us forward.

Apart from Christ we all still have those things that raise our spirits as it were and make us feel some sort of connection with the divine but by themselves they do not lead us to really know God. We may be inspired, even elated by art, we may experience feelings of deep inner peace, being at one with the universe, or locate a special place or being that appears as holy or even as a god or goddess. God may even, by his grace, draw the spirit by these wild spiritualities into a rudimentary (and perhaps even saving) knowledge of Himself but these wild spiritualities are not inspired by God and should not be trusted.