What Does “Dead to the Law” Mean?
We continue in this article our answer to this request: “Many people believe that the moral law of God (summarized in the Ten Commandments) was rendered obsolete along with the Mosaic civil and ceremonial laws. I know this is error. Please address this in the Covenant Reformed News.”
Many assume that the Scripture passages, Romans 7:4 and Galatians 2:19, which describe the believer as “dead to the law” mean that the law, especially as embodied in the Ten Commandments, has no place in the life of the New Testament believer. Romans 7:4 says, “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” Galatians 2:19 adds, “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.”
We believe that “dead to the law” does not mean “dead in every respect.” The believer may be dead to the law in some ways but not in others. Perhaps this sounds like playing with words to some but it is biblical.
When the Bible speaks of being “dead to sin” (Rom. 6:2; cf. 11), it means that we are dead in some ways and not in others. We are dead, Scripture means, to the dominion or rule of sin: “For sin shall not have dominion over you” (14; cf. 12). We are not yet dead to the presence and pollution of sin in our lives, as everyone of us knows from bitter experience. We are dead to sin in one respect but not in another.
We understand the believer’s being dead to the law along the same lines. He is dead to the dominion of the law, to its power to curse and condemn him (Gal. 3:13), but his relationship to the law is not finished, only changed, changed fundamentally and for his good. He is also dead to the law as a way of earning righteousness, for he is righteous in Christ by faith, but that does not mean that the law has no role in his life.
Galatians 2:19 says that this being dead to the law is through the law. What a wonderful and concise statement of our relation to the law. By the law’s convicting us of sin (even that does not happen without the work of the Spirit), we die to the law’s condemnation, its curse, its insistence that we must keep it in order to live. Thus the law drives us to Christ for forgiveness and (imputed) righteousness. Only then do we live unto God.
This is what the Word of God says in Romans 3:31: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” The fact that we are justified by faith without the works of the law does not mean that the law is abolished. Instead, the law is established as the way in which we know our sin and so are convinced that our righteousness must come from Christ alone: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (20).
The Scripture verses which say that the believer is not under the law (Rom. 6:14-15; Gal. 5:18) must be understood along the same lines as we noted in the previous article. Galatians 3:23-4:7 uses the example of a child in relation to the law of his parents. Until he reaches maturity, he is no better than a slave being under tutors and governors though he is heir of all (4:1-3). When he reaches maturity, then he is freed from that “bondage” and enters the freedom which was always his but which he did not fully enjoy in his youth (cf. 4-7).
So it is with the believer in relation to the law. Until he reaches his place in Christ and in Christ receives the fullness of the adoption of sons, the law is a schoolmaster to bring him to Christ (3:24). Though in the purpose of God he is the heir of all things, he is under the law, until the tutorship and governorship of the law serves to bring him to Christ. Then his relationship to the law changes fundamentally, and the law, which appeared to be his master, becomes his servant, advising him in understanding his sin and in the way of thankful obedience to God.
The very fact that Paul describes the law as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ implies that the law is not absent in the life of a child of God. Even before he is saved, it has its function, though his relationship to the law is changed when, by God’s wonderful grace, he is brought into living fellowship with Christ. The law, however, continues to have a role even after we are saved, though it does so not as something that has rule over us but as a trusted adviser. So it is with tutors and governors and schoolmasters. Once we are no longer under their authority, they can and often do become trusted advisers and counsellors.
Galatians 2:19, one of the passages that speaks of being “dead to the law,” actually says that the law still has a place in the life of the child of God: “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” It is the law itself which bring about my being dead to the law. This is sometimes described as the first use of the law, that “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20).
This is to say, of course, that there is one thing the law cannot do. It cannot justify us before God: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (8:3-4). Even then the problem was not some deficiency or defect in the law. The problem was in us. The law was “weak through the flesh,” that is, on account of our sinful natures.
There are other things the law cannot do. It shows us our sin but it cannot keep us from sinning. It teaches us how to show our thankfulness to God but it cannot make us thankful. It reveals our need for Christ but we will not embrace Him except the Spirit also works in our hearts. It shows us who God is and what it means to live righteously, that is, in harmony with His glory and majesty, but it cannot write itself in our hearts and give us what we need to live righteously. It is only at best a servant of the redeemed and delivered Christian, and a servant with limited responsibilities and duties.
Romans 7 also establishes the place of the law in the life of the child of God, that is, if one understands, as we do, the man of Romans 7 to be the regenerated and renewed child of God. Paul, speaking as a one redeemed and renewed, says, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (7-12).
Paul’s statements about the law may not be brushed aside. The law is not sin; it is not evil. Paul himself admits that he did not know sin except by the law. The law is holy and just and good, he says, a very different opinion of the law than that of those who reject the law altogether. He says again at the end of the chapter, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (22). It is impossible to understand this reference to the inward man, as speaking of something other than the new man in Christ, the regenerated and renewed child of God.
Our Heidelberg Catechism states the two main purposes of the law for Christians: “First, that all our lifetime we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature, and thus become the more earnest in seeking the remission of sin and righteousness in Christ; likewise, that we constantly endeavour, and pray to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we may become more and more conformable to the image of God, till we arrive at the perfection proposed to us in a life to come” (A. 115).
Personally, I find it difficult to understand the opposition of some to the law. Read, studied, learned, it reminds me of the folly of sin when I am inclined to be careless. It reminds me of what God has done for me in Christ, who kept the law perfectly to provide a robe of righteousness for me, and to be a perfect atoning substitute for my disobedience and waywardness. The law also shows me how to express my gratitude to Him who delivered me from the Egypt of this world and the house of sin’s bondage.
But when I see my sin, and my need for correction and holiness, I do not turn to the law but to Christ. When I see in the law how thankful I ought to be, I find that I cannot even be thankful apart from the grace and Spirit of my Saviour. Though it serves to remind me of Christ’s perfect obedience, I find the only source of obedience in Him and not in the law. Rev. Ron Hanko
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