It is my opinion that the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Galatians was his most important letter. One will never truly understand God’s amazing grace until the reason for the Mosaic Law is fully understood. In the first part of his letter, Paul penned these jaw dropping words: “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain” (Gal. 2:21). That is powerful! Paul said that if a law could have given life, then righteousness would have been by the law. “But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). The religious Jews were trying to convince Galatian Christians that in order to be saved, belief was not enough. They insisted they must keep the Mosaic Law.
Paul countered by teaching that a sinful man cannot have a right relationship with God based upon his keeping the law. If a right standing before God could come by keeping the law, then Christ’s death would be meaningless. In fact, if there had ever been a law that could have produced righteousness for anyone, then righteousness should have come to us that way. But no law has ever been used by God to give any human being life. This is not meant to diminish the value of God’s law. It is extremely important in the plan of God. For that reason, the law is referred to hundreds of times in the Bible.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). The word “sin” means “to miss the mark.” The mark that we all have missed is the mark of the absolute perfection of God. How is this standard of perfection revealed? It is revealed through the Mosaic Law. We all fell short of God’s perfect standard when we sinned in Adam (Rom. 5:12). Falling short of God’s glory is a result of being born into the slave-market of Adam’s death. We do not become sinners because we do bad things; we do bad things because we are born sinners. We do not become sinners with time and evil influence; we began as sinners and evil just comes naturally. We sin because Adam’s earthy image is imprinted upon us at conception. In fact, in Adam we are not capable of doing anything that pleases God. God declares that our good deeds are like filthy rags to Him (Isa. 64:6).
It is against the backdrop of our sin in Adam that God gave the law. “For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed [put to an account] when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Rom. 5:13-14). This verse holds the key to understanding the question “Why the law?” For nearly 2,000 years, from Adam to Moses, the people of the earth did not possess God’s law in written form, yet the old shadow of death was still around. It would have been impossible for man to keep the law in order to be saved during that time, because the law had not been given. However, even though these people did not have a specific command to break – like Adam’s eating of the fruit – all died. Physical death proved without a doubt that Adam’s nature was still in us even though we had broken no law as Adam did.
This does not mean that sin did not exist without the law, but for hundreds of years sin did not have the character of a transgression before God. And though death still marked Adam’s sin in us, sin was not taken into account as a transgression. “Because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law, there is no transgression” (Rom. 4:15). Said simply, how could anyone know that they had broken God’s law if there was not a law to break? How could we know that we had fallen short of God’s glory if we did not have knowledge of what God’s glory was? How could we know that we had died in Adam if we had no way to understand death? How could we understand that we were sinners if we had no way to measure sin? It would be similar to having no knowledge that we had transgressed the requirements of our state government by running through an intersection if there was no stop sign at the intersection to remind us.
The whole Mosaic system of laws was designed by God not to save or to give life but to reveal sin’s true character of death. The righteous demands of God upon the human race are brought to light by the use of His law. Sin within the human race had no real identity, no definition, until His law gave it one. This is exactly what Paul had in mind when he asked the Galatians this question: “If the law was not given to make us righteous before God, then why did God give us the law?” His answer was that the law was given by God through the mediation of angels and through a man (Moses) to reveal man’s sin as a transgression against God (Gal. 3:19-20). To transgress means to cross over or enter unlawfully into someone else’s domain. When we break God’s law, we enter unlawfully into God’s domain. Contrary to what the religious people were telling the young Galatian Christians, the law was never meant to save anyone. It had become God’s stop sign, or line of demarcation, separating sinful man from God’s unapproachable holiness. It is as though God says, “Here is my clear marker that describes my holiness and if one shall approach Me, here is My standard that I require that you keep. The moment you break one of these commands, by thought or action, you have sinned and come short of my glory.” More tomorrow. Blessings!