Law & Gospel

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Law & Gospel

November 14, 2021

Many think that we are now no longer "under the law" but under Christ in the gospel. While this is partly true it reeks of antinomianism. Lets not fall into this trap of thinking that just because we are in Christ that we no longer need God's law or want God's law. God's law is refreshing reviving the soul. It is to be delighted in because it is good and shows us the very nature of God himself. While it no longer condemns us in Christ it is our standard of holiness to walk in through the spirit. The law & the Gospel are intimately connected, let us not forget this!

Psalm 1: "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in he way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night."

Key Texts: Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:23-25

My guest joining me this week on the Sunday series is my brother Bryce. Bryce is getting his undergraduate degree in philosophy and hopes to get his MDiv. from a seminary after he completes his undergrad. He hopes to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day.

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Transcript

This is vital because you can't talk about the Gospel apart from the law. Law is foundational to the Gospel because we have not broken the law. It says in verse John that sin is lawlessness, right.

It's acting as if there is no law. Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do.

Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life. Because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord.

Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I will not apologize for this God of the Bible. Revelation chapter 1 verse 5. Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

Welcome to the For the King podcast everybody. Whoever you're listening from, I appreciate you tuning into this podcast. We recognize Christ as the king on this podcast.

And not only the king of the church or the king of my life because oh I have faith in Christ and you don't. Therefore he's not your king. When we say Jesus is the king, we mean he's the king over all things whether you recognize it or not.

As you've just heard in my intro from what Paul Washer says, whether you bend the knee or not, Jesus Christ is your king and he is the Lord. And that's what we see in Revelation 1 chapter 5. And that's why we read it every time we do the podcast now. So thanks for tuning in.

Jesus is the king and that is what we're doing here. And we've been on a journey talking about the centrality of the gospel. There's certain words that you're just like, they're just funny sounding.

We've been on a journey going through this central... We do not stop believing. Yeah, we don't stop believing. Hold on to that dream.

You feeling? What's he say? I can't remember. I can't either. Anyways, we're talking about the centrality of the gospel.

Yeah. That's right. We're talking about the foundation of the gospel.

The first episode we did was the centrality of the gospel. That's it. We took a quick break and then we've walked through the past two weeks through redemption.

We talked about the bad news, the bad news of our sin that warrants the good news of the gospel, that being a foundation, the bad news being a foundation of the gospel, what we're being saved from our sin. And now the next step we want to take is talking about how the law and sin interact in us needing Christ to free us from the law in a sense that we might not be imprisoned under it anymore, but be freed to walk in the law because of obedience to God that we can have through the spirit. Right.

We're ruling us, but we actually can freely walk in the law and we still do have the law as an insight into the character of God. And we love the law. Just like we agree with David in Psalm one.

The law is good. We ought to meditate on it. Psalm 119, the sum of your word is truth.

His law is truth. We still recognize those things, but what we want to get at and drive home in this episode is that it's no longer in Christ our taskmaster. We're no longer its pupil and it's disciplining us.

We're now free to follow the law. Good. I don't think it's necessarily right.

It's still disciplining us, but it's in righteousness as opposed to just heightening sin in our lives. Sure. It's no longer disciplining us as not believing or disciplining as a sons now.

Yeah. And that's what the law does to us because we've been adopted into his family. Yeah.

The Gentiles as well. Yeah. Good.

But it does literally saying Galatians, it's no longer, it was our guardian and guardian means disciplinarian. That's the word it uses. So it says it's no longer our disciplinarian.

That's what? Different context. Okay. Well, we can talk about that then.

Hopefully that maybe that'll help some of the listeners. But you read your text first and then we'll get into that. All right.

Romans 3 20. Very key. Very important.

It says this. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, referring to God, since through the law comes knowledge. Of sin.

This is vital because when you can't talk about the gospel, apart from law, law is foundational to the gospel because we have broken the law. It says in first John that sin is lawlessness, right? It's acting as if there is no law. You only know that there is sin by the breaking of the law.

And Paul already made this abundantly clear in Romans chapter two that the Jews break the law, given them on stone tablets. And the Gentiles break the law on the stone tablets that has been given in their hearts. That we all fall short of the glory of God, which is what he's going to end up getting into in Romans three.

So the law reveals that we have sinned and that we have transgressed God's law. So it's very vital. This is extremely important because unless you, there's nothing, there's no repentance if you don't have the law.

There's nothing to repent of because you don't know what's wrong. You have to have the law. The law has to expose you so that you see that you need a savior.

Yeah. Anything out of that? No. Yeah.

I mean, sin and law are so intimately connected. That's why we had to differentiate them, but they're also distinct. Yeah.

Yeah. Like you were saying, the law reveals sin in our hearts. It's a standard by which we know that we've transgressed.

Yeah. So sin's not just a feeling, a bad feeling you have when you do something. Sin is, there is a certain standard, and the way you feel and react to that is because there's a standard you know internally in your heart that you've transgressed.

Sin is a, it's a real thing that you do willfully in your mind. It's not just a bad feeling after you do something. And it's a, it's a, it's an infraction against a specific somebody.

Yeah. That's why David says in the Psalms, "Against you and you alone, O Lord, have I sinned." Yeah. He wronged a person, but against you and you alone, O Lord, it's an infraction against God Almighty.

Exactly. Yep. So I think that's good.

That's why sin and law are connected, but law is distinct because it's the standard by which we know we've transgressed. Right. It's something we can objectively look at and say, "Yes, I have transgressed something." Right.

And by itself, we can't know what sin is by itself apart from the law being given out of God's own nature. Yeah. Out of his own character.

Good. Yeah. And if you want to know what the law is, it's summarized in, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love you and aviaries you love yourself." Yeah.

And if you want to get in a little bit more specifics, look at the Ten Commandments. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. Down to next is 20. Look at those and recognize you've fallen so short.

Look in Matthew chapter five when Jesus expounds the law more and tells us with more clarity that even if you've looked at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery and your heart. Yeah. Right.

Even if you've looked at someone with hatred, you've actually murdered them. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. So we've all broken this law. And where does that law lead us to? Rocky? To Christ.

To Christ. Exactly. And that's what it says in Galatians 3 24 that the law was our schoolmaster, that we might be justified by faith in Christ.

Yeah. It leads us. It disciplined us towards Christ.

Right. Before, yes, as a harsh disciplinarian. Right.

But now, yes, okay, yes, like our distinction earlier. I agree, obviously. Yeah.

It still does discipline us and it reveals our sin. But it's no longer leading us to Christ. It's now we have Christ and we look to the law on how to be close to Him.

Yeah. No longer how to get, or sorry, pointing towards Him as a shadow, pointing towards the one who would keep the law. It was always doing that.

But that's what I think of the thrusters here in this Galatians passage. So we can read it real quick. Sure.

Sounds good. All right, Galatians 3 24. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

And then 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. Yeah.

And that word guardian is like a taskmaster, disciplinarian, like a teacher in a sense. Yeah. And yes, it was doing that before Christ.

It was leading us to Him. But now that faith has come in Christ, we now have the object of our faith. They were believing in the promise before.

They believed in God and the promises He gave to them in each covenant, looking forward, like, you know, all the way back to the covenant given to Adam in the garden about there would be a serpent crusher. Yeah. So I had the head of the serpent crusher, whatever.

Surfer crusher. I don't know about saying that. It sounds weird when I say it.

I think it's right. Yeah. But that was always binding on them.

They always knew. Yeah. That's who they were looking for.

That's who they were looking for. And then we see that in each covenant fleshed out more and more until, you know, with the given of the law. Right.

With the federal head in the King, all that kind of thing. Yeah. And eventually we have that in Christ.

The law is still useful to us as a way to get closer to God, get closer to Christ and be conformed to His image. Yeah. And to not grieve the spirit.

But it's no longer pointing us to Christ because we're in Christ. But I would imagine it's still a disciplinarian for those that are outside of Christ. It's still pointing.

Oh, absolutely. It's still because he's talking to Christians here. So that's what his point is when he's saying it's no longer our disciplinarian.

It's not pointing us to Christ. We have Christ. It's now revealing his nature and his character.

We get to know him more, get closer to him through the law. Yeah. That's what I guess what I meant when I'm saying it's no longer our task.

Right. And that's to the Christ hidden in the Old Testament. Because beforehand, they had no clue why they were saved.

Yeah. It was so mysterious to them that how could it just God justify sinners. Yeah.

But now we see that clarified in the New Testament that it comes with the coming of the serpent crusher, the death killer. The life giver, the justifier, the judge, Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins. He's the just and the justifier.

Exactly. Exactly. So now we see this beautiful picture that this law was that which hid mankind until Christ came.

And now we're justified by faith. And that's not to say that they weren't justified by faith previously. But it was they were that Samuel Renahan says it this way in his book of the mystery of Christ.

He says they were saved under that covenant with the law, but they were not saved by it. Yeah. They were saved by looking forward to the Savior, the suffering Savior.

Suffering Savior. Yeah. And that's the beauty of this right here is Jesus is the law of the filler.

And that's probably another episode. But the law leads you to Christ because it's a reflection. It's a mirror.

That's what James says. James says that it's a mirror that you hold up and all you see is disgusting ugliness. It's just a rotten flesh.

Exactly. Yeah. Well said.

So if we're thinking about the gospel and the foundation of the gospel, the law is important because it points us to Christ. And that's why usually all people that come to. Well, yeah, all people that come to Christ.

I don't even know if there's any there's no way around it. If you're going to come to Christ, you're going to realize you've transgressed his standard is now. And that's why.

Yeah. Well, I remember when Bryce was first starting to follow Jesus because I had got to see that. That's what he was realizing.

He had done something wrong and there's somebody who had done something right and could justify him. Yeah. That's what Bryce was realizing.

So all the people I've seen that come to Christ, that's what they always realize. Their sin. And how do you know it's sin because you've broken a law.

Right. It's clearly. It's more clear there when you see the law.

You're like, well, I know something's wrong. Why is it wrong? Oh, I see this standard. I've broken it.

And now it's become clear what you've done. Right. So yeah, the law is not anti gospel folks.

Legalism is anti gospel, but the law in and of itself, we cannot be antonymian where we think the law is useless. It's just useful. And it's not the only use like a legalism would say.

It's of only use. No. It's just useful.

Yeah. It's a it's useful to know God better and to love him. It's it's the guy to the trailhead.

Hey, hey, that's good. All right. Well, thanks for listening to the for the King for the King podcast.

I forgot to mention this last Sunday, but you can you can I always put it in the show notes. You can reach me up for the King podcast at gmo.com. We have a website for the King podcast.com. So check all that out. And thanks for listening.

I'm going to finish up reading First Timothy chapter one verse 17 to the king of the ages of the world. And I'm going to read the book of the King. And I'm going to read the book of the King.

And I'm going to read the book of the King. And I'm going to read the book of the King. And I'm going to read the book of the King.