Jonathan Edwards on the Law and the Believer

We often assume that the repetition of a frightening stimulus will cause the fright from it to decrease, becoming less with each experience. Maybe I am different, but it doesn't seem to work that way for me. When I have watched a scary movie, I know what is going to happen the next time I see that movie, yet my apprehension seems merely to be increased by the anticipation.

The same thing happens with the shock I feel when people express certain theological views. One would think that my shock at them would decrease, the more often I hear them. However, it seems to work in the opposite direction. "What!? Another person who believes that?!"

One of those thing is when I hear people express disdain for the Law of God. They believe that, since the Law is never a means of salvation, that it is, therefore, something that can be ignored as irrelevant, I am shocked by that for three reasons: one, the Law is the word of God; two, such an attitude implies moral autonomy (see Genesis 3:5); and three, since the Law is the expression of the holiness of God, to ridicule it is to ridicule Him. Of course, that last is the most appalling.

Even though Paul is the author of the statement, "you are not under Law but under grace" (Romans 6:14), he cannot mean that the Law has ceased to be God's standard of moral action, because he also wrote, "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" (I Timothy 1:8-10). How can the Law be good, with a lawful use, if it can be ridiculed by a person who claims to love God? I think those two things are incompatible.

America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, explained it well: "The law of God is the rule of right...: it is the measure of virtue and sin; so much agreement as there is with this rule, so much is there of rectitude, righteousness, or true virtue, and no more; and so much disagreement as there is with this rule, so much sin is there" (Original Sin, Chapter 1, Section 5). In other words, while God's Law has no power to enable us to obey, it is still God's standard of our obedience. It is grace alone which empowers righteousness. And what is righteousness? To walk according to God's Law:: "Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD" (Psalm 119:1).