What does God Demand from Us? | Theocast Clips

The Law as Command and the Do-This-and-Live Principle

The flip, the way to negatively say this, is the do-this-and-live schema of the law in a negative sense is don't do these things and go to hell.

First of all, the law. The easiest way to understand the law is that it's a command. They are commands to do something. So anytime you hear a command, you can understand that that is a law. And I know that this can be hard for people to understand because when we think of law, it's hard because the Bible uses the word law in multiple ways, which we're going to get into more in our third episode, so stay tuned for that for a full explanation.

But for this scenario, when the Bible speaks of the law, whether the Old Testament, the five books of the law, the Mosaic law, whatever, we do understand that it is representing a command, something not suggested, but something that is commanded, that one must do.

And we've learned from Jesus, which we'll talk about here in a moment, that Jesus says, what does the law say to the lawyer? Not one of legal, but of the actual one who knows the Mosaic law. What does he say to the lawyer?

And the lawyer says, love God, love neighbor. And he says, do this and live. And so the completion of the law is this. We understand that the law represents righteousness. For those who obey the law, they are demonstrating they are righteous.

They can be considered righteous. The gospel is the opposite of the law in that there is no commands in the gospel. There is no do in the gospel. Sometimes we forget that gospel literally means news. That's what it means.

It means a declaration of what has been done. So the other way we can say this is a promise fulfilled. That's what, so you have a command to be done, a promise fulfilled, or do versus done. So the, and here's what is the promise that was fulfilled.

The promise was that where Adam failed and now fell into sin, he failed to be righteous and fell into sin. The promise is Christ succeeded to be righteous and removed our sin by taking it on for us. And there's nothing left to do.

He sits at the right hand of the father as our great high priest and mediator. And those who by faith in Christ, trust that the good news is they can be considered righteous and without sin. So that's the gospel.

And then there's, there's nothing to do this way. If you ever hear someone say there's the command of the gospel or the imperative of the gospel, there's something for you to do. There's a confusion there because there, the gospel is clearly this, a promise fulfilled.

It is done. It is news.

The Law of God as the Revelation of His Holy Character

I'm going to go ahead and take my pass at this and just maybe reiterate some of the things that you said in my own words. And sometimes this is helpful for people, especially if this is a new concept, it's good to hear it from a couple of different voices articulated in slightly different ways.

And so yes, the law of God, like you said, is the revelation of God in the scripture in terms of what he requires for righteousness. The law we agree, in particular, the moral law is a reflection of God's holy character.

And it reflects and communicates to humanity what God requires in order to be righteous in his sight, that God would look at a person and pronounce him or her just. And the law is an exacting standard.

It is perfection in terms of what it requires. God requires that we would love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the summary of the law according to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the first and second table of even the Ten Commandments, the first four commandments having to do with our love to God, the second, latter six commandments having to do with our love of neighbor.

And we need to do these things perfectly. As Jesus communicated in the Sermon on the Mount, this is not mere external conformity. This is at the level of thought, at the level of motivation, desire, affection, everything.

And have you done this is the question. This is a do this and live formula like you just referenced, Leviticus 18 .5. Whoever does these things will live by them eternally. The flip, the way to negatively say this, is the do this and live schema of the law in a negative sense is don't do these things and go to hell.

That's it.

You do it or you don't do it, you're either blessed eternally or you're cursed eternally based on whether you've kept the law or not. Now the gospel, on the other hand, like you said, John, has no imperative, no command pertaining to what we need to accomplish whatsoever.

Christ Accomplished in Our Place by Grace Through Faith

The gospel is entirely and only about what Jesus Christ has accomplished in our place that is then given to us by grace, received through faith. And so whenever we hear about what we're to do for righteousness, that's law in the scripture, whenever we read here about what's been done for us and is given to us by God via promise and grace and faith, that's gospel.