The Lawful Use of the Law

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Please enjoy the following sermon. Well, I want to introduce our subject matter today in 1

Timothy with a brief account of something that I experienced a number of years ago.

It was about 15 years ago that we were in, my wife and I were members of, that was our very first church.

Many of you have heard about the nature of that first church. And on one particular evening, my wife and I were, actually

I was alone, I was at church visiting with a group of people, when all of a sudden there was an unexpected sound at the front door as we were having a conversation.

And seeing that there was a sound at the door and observing someone coming through the door, I sought to be a hospitable host for this person that was coming in.

It was at the end of an elders meeting. And so we weren't expecting visitors, but I wanted to greet this person warmly.

And so coming to the door, I met with a tall man who was well -dressed, lugging along a heavy bag.

And I extended my hand to greet him. And as I extended my hand to greet this man, he responded in a way that I did not expect.

Rather than extending his hand and grasping mine, the man recoiled. And then putting his hands in front of him, he said to me, he said, hello, greetings in the name of Jesus, Yeshua Messiah.

Mixing a little bit of English and Hebrew. And I thought that was odd, but I continued going.

And as we continued our conversation, the man indicated to me that he could not offer me his right hand of fellowship just yet because he did not know if we had unity on a very important matter related to the

Christian life. And I soon found out what this was all about. The man explained that he had been a

Christian for several years. And then one day he had made a revolutionary discovery.

The man explained that in the course of a detailed study of his Bible, he had uncovered a lost truth that the church was largely blind to.

And this was the great truth that he had discovered. That all Christians everywhere across all time, including today here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, are bound by all 613 of the old covenant laws that we find in the

Torah. And he went on and explained that when he had made this realization, God made it clear to him that his life's purpose was to travel around the city, living by faith on those who would support his mission.

And he was going to proclaim this gospel of the law to every

Christian and to every church that would hear him. And this man was so positively convinced of this mission and of this truth that he relayed to me that he had left his wife, he had left his teenage son back at home, and was now living abroad across the city seeking to tell every

Christian that they are bound by all of the Old Testament laws. Well, if you know me, it might not surprise you that I was very curious about this man.

And so I did what I do with a lot of people that I'm curious about, and I spent more time with him. In fact, several hours over several weeks.

I'm sheepish to admit it, and Nicole is going to smile at me, but I allowed the man to live with us for four days.

And so we really got to know this man and what it was that he was teaching. As it turns out,

I was harboring a false teacher. You should not do that. But being a new Christian, I wanted to know what he was about.

And because I didn't know, really, what he was talking about, and didn't know how to respond to this man's very confident claims,

I did the only thing that I knew to do, which was that I shopped this man around to all of my mature

Christian friends. Meaning, we would wake up, I would go to work, because he was living in my house, and then

I would come home from work, and then I would take him to go to a more mature Christian person's home to get their perspective on the matter.

I remember introducing him to members of our church who had no idea what in the world he was talking about, and did not know how to respond to his claims that we were bound by all 613 of this laws.

I remember taking him to our associate pastor, who looked at me like, why are you bringing this man to me?

And then I remember taking him, when it seemed like all hope was lost, to the most mature Christian I knew, who he owned a full commentary set, including one on Galatians.

I remember that being on his desk when we went to his home. And we were there for a few minutes before my dear friend kicked us out.

And so we got back in the car after a kerfuffle, because he would not have false teachers in his house. And I was the driver, so I had to go too.

And on our way back to my house, I remember thinking, why is it that no one has any idea how to interact with this idea that we are bound by all of the laws in the

Old Testament? Why is it that so many people, when they're confronted by this man, they don't have a swift response.

They don't have a biblical response. They do not have any response. And it's really interesting, because this man, wherever he went, sounded so authoritative.

He had staked his whole life on this. Here he was, in his trench coat and his heavy bag, going around preaching the gospel of the law.

And there's something that happened. Something that I realized in the course of all of this, that it seemed that this issue of the law was one big dark spot on the map of Christian doctrine.

No one had ever been there. No one wanted to go there. No one would tell you how to navigate through that part of the map.

You just kind of had to go around the law. There was no way to understand it. We just don't talk about it.

And eventually, as I parted ways with this man, Nicole was very happy that I eventually had him leave our home.

After those brief couple of weeks, it really left a lasting impact on the way that I read my

Bible. Maybe you know how this is. Every single time I came upon a reference to the law, especially the law in the

New Testament, I would make a mental and sometimes a physical note, writing it down, as I grew to understand the role of the law better and better in the

Christian life. And while much has changed in my understanding of the law over the last 15 years,

I would be confident to say that still 15 years later, when you ask the average

Christian, most people do not know what to do with the law. Are we bound to all 613 of the old covenant commandments that this man was seeking to preach?

Are we bound by the 10 commandments? Is it that God has written his law in our hearts and that is sufficient?

Is it that the law of love is our guide? Is it that the Spirit alone is our guide?

What do we do with the law? And today, as we look at 1 Timothy, I'm grateful that Paul gives us an understanding of what it means to use the law lawfully.

Here is, as we find ourselves in Ephesus again, with young Timothy seeking to right the wrongs in this church, we get to see the lawful use of the law.

And I hope as we get through this study, as we get through this text, that we will shed some light on the dark spot on this map, that it will leave with a better understanding of how we are to use the law today.

So, I had us turn to 1 Timothy 1 and verse 6. I'm going to read from verse 5 through verse 11 for context, and then we're going to split this up in a few different parts.

So this is God's word to us, 1 Timothy 1 and verse 5. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

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, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God with which I have been entrusted. So as we look at this text, the first truth that I want to put before you,

I've labeled it, it's in the insert in your bulletin if you'd like to follow along, is man's confusion of the law found in verses 6 and 7.

Here in verses 6 and 7, I think what we see is a sobering example of man's propensity to misunderstand and misapply the law.

As we learned last week, when Paul left Timothy in Ephesus going on to Macedonia, he assigned

Timothy to this post to have him address many of the strange new doctrines that were being taught in Ephesus.

And as we heard last week, the people began to gravitate rather than towards the gospel, towards myths and genealogies and speculations.

And Paul reminded Timothy of the great overarching aim of his instruction to the church.

His singular desire was that the church would grow in its love, in its love for God, in its love for one another, in its love for neighbor.

But here in verse 6, we learned that certain persons, and the language is interesting here, had swerved from this great aim.

They had deviated from the straight and narrow way, as it were, and wandered away, Paul tells us, into vain discussion.

Now that word for vain discussion is an interesting one. It's a single word in the original

Greek. And it's what we would call a hapax legomena, meaning that it's a word that appears only one time in the

Bible. And so sometimes we have to, with hapax legomena, look elsewhere in other writings around that time to see what that word means.

And here it is a particularly forceful word. That they swerved from this charge of love, from this aim of love, to vain discussions.

It could be translated fruitless discussions, empty talk, or perhaps most potently futile speech.

And this is what Paul was after. You and I both know what it is like to be in a conversation, where we have been in conversations before that have not benefited anyone as we have engaged in them.

They're the kind of conversations that are frankly a waste of our precious time that God has given us.

And we've had these kinds of conversations. They're the ones that you have them, you might laugh about them, you might enjoy them in the moment, and then as you get in your car after church, after a visit with a friend, whatever it is, and you say to yourself, what was that?

What were we talking about? And you're forced to confess and say, Lord forgive me for that foolish and idle conversation.

Here that is what these members, these teachers and leaders in the church were engaging in, futile discussion.

And here in Ephesus, it believes that, or it seems that the leaders of this church were now engaged in this on nearly a full -time basis.

And Paul gives us some hints into the subject matter of these vain discussions as we look in verse 7.

Saying, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

Now that phrase, teachers of the law, this is language that's used two times in our

Bible, both times related to the Pharisees, always the Pharisees, and rarely flattering in its use.

And here these men were likely engaging in at least two simultaneous errors that the surrounding context of 1st

Timothy chapter 1 speaks to. Firstly, they were drifting back into a law -based works righteousness.

This context seems to indicate that their emphasis on the law was obscuring their gospel and we'll see, or the gospel, and we'll see why that is as we look at who the gospel, or sorry, who the law was intended for.

And then number two, they were becoming preoccupied with fanciful Jewish speculations surrounding the law.

And we see this, we saw this last week when Paul made remarks about myths and useless speculation.

And this week as I was doing some study I found some commentary from a sound commentator, his name is

William Hendrickson, who speaks to this and it really does paint a picture of what kind of vain discussion they were engaged in.

William Hendrickson says this, it is a known fact that from early times the rabbis would spin their yarns, you can picture the rabbis, and endless yarns they were on the basis of what they considered some hints supplied by the

Old Testament. They would make, they would take a name from the Old Testament and expand upon it in a nice story.

Such embroideries on the inspired record were part of the regular bill affair in the synagogue and were subsequently deposited into the written form in that portion of the

Talmud known as the Haggadah. The book of Jubilees suffers me another example, he writes.

The sacred narrative, and this is key, you want to talk about vain discussion. The sacred narrative of our book of Genesis is embellished at times almost beyond recognition.

This we now learn, that they spoke about how the Sabbath was observed by archangels, that the angels practiced circumcision, that Jacob never tricked anyone in his life, and on and on and on.

You can imagine for the Apostle Paul what a profound disappointment this would be. If you can remember that scene in Acts chapter 20, the

Apostle Paul standing there before the Ephesian elders, commending his example to them, warning them that fierce wolves would come even from within their own midst.

And then how that they embraced and knelt together there near the ship and prayed, weeping before the

Lord. And only a few years later, here the leaders of this church, the very same leaders of this church, became more interested in myths like the implications of angel circumcision rather than the gospel.

And don't even ask me how one circumcises an angel. And though their doctrine was twisted as it were as a pretzel, they became, or they were making, very confident assertions in this.

They possessed what I would say are the two most dangerous attributes of a teacher in error.

Number one, they had no idea what they were talking about. And number two, they were incredibly persuasive because they believed it with all their hearts.

And I want you to see how easily this happens. It is, I was thinking about it this week, almost as if we are set to confusion on the law by default.

And what makes it even harder is that myriads of books and study Bibles and teaching series have been published that all seem to contradict each other on this point of the law.

On one hand, if we were to go to the Puritans and the Reformers, we would read how they taught on the perpetuity of the moral law, the

Ten Commandments, and how it was a helpful guide for Christians today. How it is a helpful guide for Christians today.

A few hundred years later, if we were to take up a Schofield study Bible, when you turn to Matthew chapter 5 and get to the

Beatitudes, there he writes that the Sermon on the Mount is not for Christians because it is law.

And Christians don't have law. We're not under law. We're under grace. And therefore, the Sermon on the

Mount is for some future kingdom of Jews. What a confusing thing if you have a

Schofield study Bible in one hand and then the Geneva Bible or maybe the Spurgeon study

Bible in your left hand. And then to boot, you've got confused men who are standing at your door about to tell you, you need to obey all 613 of the commandments if you're to be a faithful Christian.

And it almost is enough to make one say, that's it. I can't take it. I'm not gonna deal with the law.

And that's pretty much what most Christians have done today. I'm just not going to touch it. It's too confusing.

I'll let the experts deal with it and I'll remain ignorant to it. But Paul does not give us that option.

And we see this in the second truth that he puts before us. That not only is there much confusion regarding the law, but here we see as well the goodness of the law.

That the law is good. We read in verse 8, now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.

Paul does something here that many of us perhaps don't want him to do. That he tells us this is a good thing worthy of our attention and worthy of our participation.

He does not write the law off as some kind of vestigial organ in the Christian life as if to say that it once served a beneficial purpose at one time, but it does no longer.

And so if it becomes a problem we can simply remove it and carry on. He does not throw it in the trash heap of his former

Jewish life. Rather he tells us that the law is presently good and serves a legitimate function.

And I think, I think seriously that I have a difficult, a difficulty ahead of me on this point because the

Christian world in which we live is fiercely antinomian. What does that word antinomian mean?

Anti as in against and namas law. That the Christians today are against law and perhaps in part for good reason and perhaps just because of the confusion that surrounds the law.

Many Christians today have no category for the law. Perhaps the most informed person who is an antinomian, whether they know it or not, will quote something like Romans 3 28 and say, but we are justified by faith apart from works of the law.

And because justification is good, therefore faith is good. And law, because it is not what gets us justified, is bad.

This does not mean that the gospel is good and that the law is bad. The law is wrong.

I think that we don't, we don't need to look much further than our Bibles to see that the clear teaching of Scripture is that the law is good.

In Psalm 19 verses 7 through 9 we read, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

Listen to this, verse 9, the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

So we know at least that David has a very fond view of the law. We see more of this in Psalm 119 and verse 97 where he says, oh how

I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.

Now I read Psalm 19. I read Psalm 119.

Someone will invariably say, yes, okay, but that was the

Old Testament. The law was good in the Old Testament, but it's not good anymore.

Not in the same way. But if we look at passages like Romans chapter 7, this is the great book of God's grace, of how we are justified by faith, by grace through faith in the

Lord Jesus. Paul says in Romans 7, 12, so the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Speaking about how it is difficult to keep the law and yet just because we are evil and we struggle with the law, it doesn't mean that the law is bad.

The law is still good. Or the Lord Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 17.

This is my last reference on this point. He says, do you think that I've come to abolish the law with the prophets?

I have not come to abolish but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So we can say with the Apostle Paul then, in 1st Timothy chapter 1 and verse 7, that we now know that the law is good.

But the very next question might be this. What constitutes that law?

What is Paul talking about here? Is he talking about those 613 commandments?

Is he talking about the civil law or the ceremonial law or the moral law as it is often divided in a threefold division?

I think that we can say, I want to show you this, I find this fascinating, that we can actually see from the vice list that Paul gives us exactly what portion of the law he is speaking to.

Now I will say that all of God's laws are good and they're all good when they're rightly applied in their right context.

But here Paul has something very specific in mind. And I want to do this with you.

I don't want to show you this. I want you to see this for yourself so that you don't think that I am somehow imposing my own system upon the text, but that this is in fact in the text.

This is the teaching of the text. So Paul says in verse 7, verse 8 sorry, now that we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, let's read in verse 8, verse 9 what we find.

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.

I'm going to give just a little division here because we will shift up to this point.

We have a series of couplets. There's this sin and this sin, this sin and this sin, this sin and this sin.

We're about to shift. For those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

Now look at that list carefully and I ask you, do you see a discernible structure there?

Do you see a list there that you recognize? Or if you were to isolate just beginning at the end of verse 9, for those who strike father and mother, and then murderers, and then the sexually immoral, and then the enslavers, and then the liars, what do we see?

Here we actually see Paul listing the Ten Commandments, or at least nine of the

Ten Commandments in this body of the law, following the same pattern of Exodus chapter 20 where the

Ten Commandments first appear. In the first table of the law, the first table of the

Ten Commandments is often referred to as, or sorry, the first four Commandments are often referred to as the first table.

These are those Commandments that relate to our obligation to God. They are summarized as the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, the holy and profane.

And what's interesting about that word profane is it's the same word that is used in Nehemiah chapter 13 where the

Israelites are accused of profaning the Sabbath day. But that is a bit more tenuous.

I will admit that. But moving on, if there was any doubt, those who strike their fathers and mothers, literally one who kills father or mother, is clearly a reference to the

Fifth Commandment. Murderers is a reference to the Sixth Commandment. The sexually immoral and those who practice homosexuality, that is an expansion on the

Seventh Commandment related to adultery. Enslavers, someone might look at that and say, how does an enslaver deal with the idea of theft?

If you have a King James Version, you don't have your King James Version here today. If you had your King James Version open, it would say man -stealers.

Those who steal men. Kidnappers. And so not just those who steal things from men, but those who steal men themselves.

The ultimate violation of the Eighth Commandment. Liars and perjurers are those who bear false witness.

That is the Ninth Commandment. And then the Tenth Commandment doesn't appear. Maybe that's included in whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

Some scholars believe that the Tenth Commandment does not appear because it is the only sin on the list that is a sin of thought or desire rather than action.

So being contrary to the law. So here Paul tells us that the law is good.

Therefore you and I, brothers and sisters, though we might find the law confusing at times, we must reckon with Paul that the law is good.

Some of us may have difficulty understanding it. Some we may see misinterpret it. Some may misappropriate its claims upon our lives.

Nevertheless, the law is good. And then as we see him apply this law, he conveys that this good law, the good law that he has in his mind, is the moral law of God.

What I would say is the moral law of God summarily contained in the Ten Commandments. As if to say that the

Ten Commandments do not comprise all of the moral law, but they really summarize the sum in substance of the moral law.

And here what we don't see included is the civil or the ceremonial law. Now someone might say, why if that man comes through that back door and says, you are bound by all the food laws, all of the clothing laws.

I remember my wife and I having a conversation with him one day about socks. He says, if you check all of my clothing,

I am wearing all the same fabric except for my socks. And my wife said, well, then you're breaking that law.

He says, but God knows my heart. He knows that if I could find socks made of one material,

I would have socks made of one material. We took this dear man to a restaurant and they served him shellfish.

And he spat it all over the table when he found out that it was shellfish. It was really quite uncomfortable.

What do we say to this man? Do we say the law is good and therefore you keep all those laws and we should too?

Well, no. Because we see in Scripture again and again and again, the exclusion of those civil and ceremonial laws.

Related to food laws. Mark chapter 7 and verse 18 and 19. Jesus said, do you not see that whatever goes into the person from outside cannot defile him since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled?

And in the inspired brackets or in inspired parentheses, it says, thus he declared all foods clean.

In Acts chapter 10, as Peter had the vision, there were these unclean animals that were lower down before him.

And Peter was told to take and eat. He said, I will never eat that which is unclean. And he says, do not call common.

Or do not call what I call clean, what I've made clean common. In Colossians chapter 2, we read about this.

That we are no longer bound to these food laws and these restrictions. In Hebrews chapter 10, we read about the end of the ritual sacrifice laws.

How in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 1, it speaks to these being a shadow. The sacrifice laws of all the lambs, and all the goats, and all the bulls, and all these animals where the blood would pour down from the altar.

That all of this was a shadow pointing to a substance. The substance of that being this.

In Hebrews 10, 11, he says, and every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down.

The sacrifices are done at the right hand of God, waiting for that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Meaning that we don't need any more sacrifices. I remember having that conversation with that friend.

I said, what do we do of the sacrifices? He says, God knows that if we still did sacrifices, I would do sacrifices.

But what of Christ? It did not measure in, did not factor in.

All the civil laws. I have an interesting view on the civil law, because the civil law is perhaps less explicit in its abrogation.

The civil law, if you know it, is the various rules that as the nation of Israel became a nation, it was the instruction for them for how they were to build their homes, how they were to treat oxen who fell into a pit.

If my oxen gores your oxen, what do we do about that? These are not the kind of laws that bind the conscience of individual believers, but these are civil laws for a given time.

As a people enter into a land and become a nation. Now do

I think, I will grant this, that there is some general equity in the application of those things.

So that if I build a deck that's three stories tall, I should probably put a railing around it. If I have a dog that goes and chases a herd of cattle through a farmer's field and two of them die,

I should probably pay for those two cattle that perished because of my dog. Nevertheless, it does not bind the conscience of the individual

Christian. And so the law is good. And the law that we are speaking to specifically, the law that Paul is speaking to specifically is the moral law summarized in the

Ten Commandments. And if I wait here long enough, a person will stand up and say, but the law is only good if there is a qualifier, if it is used lawfully.

And that's really what we're getting at here. That people confuse the law. Nevertheless, the law is good, but we must use it lawfully.

And I want to spend the rest of our time talking then about my third point, the lawful use of the law.

Here, what Paul is showing us is that the law is used lawfully when it tends to the good.

And in verse 11, when it is in accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God, he says, with which I have been entrusted. One of the things that we need to appreciate is that we cannot use the law any which way we choose.

We cannot have a private revelation in our homes and somehow violate the law in the course of seeking to proclaim this law, leaving your spouse and leaving your child at home so that you can go and proclaim this.

But we must use the law the way God in his revealed will, in his word, outlines the use of this law.

And here Paul tells us that the law was not principally laid down for the just, but he says for the lawless, the anomos, those who are without a law.

That a prefix at the beginning of it, namos, I explained earlier is law. Anomos are those without a law.

The law was laid down for those without a law and who are disobedient. And so the list goes on.

Now there has been much debate about who the just one is in this passage.

You'll notice here in verse nine that, and you can see this more clearly in the original language, that it's laid down for the just, singular.

Now who is this just one? There are a few different perspectives on this. Some would argue that the just person in this passage are those who are justified believers, meaning that the law is not meant for Christians, but for the unrighteous and sinners.

So Christians are just. You don't have to worry about the law. The law is not for you. The law is for them. The other position is that the just are a hypothetical people.

A hypothetical people who are without sin and for whom the law is a tool simply to enhance their own righteousness.

Now I want you to think here for a moment. What position is it? Is the just a justified

Christian? The law is not for us, it's for them. Or is the just a hypothetical person that none of us measure up to because all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?

I have for years held to number one and have since switched to number two.

I've agonized over this. I've looked at the wording. I've looked at the context.

I've looked at what Paul is teaching in this letter. That the just is not any of us, but the just is some hypothetical person that does not exist.

And therefore the law is for us. But it still must be used lawfully, if this makes sense.

I want to show you from commentators from a few different places. One commentator says, such righteous people are not real, but they are hypothetical and they are only righteous in their minds.

William Hendrickson, a Reformed commentator, he says, that was the very point that these false teachers were forgetting.

The reason why they wasted their time on all kinds of fanciful tales regarding ancestors was that they had never learned to know themselves as sinners before God.

Or even John MacArthur, who I think we would arrive at different conclusions here. And yet we agree similarly on the same party.

He says, those who think they are righteous will never be saved because they do not understand the true purpose of the law.

The false teachers with their works system of personally achieved self -righteousness in their own minds had shown clearly that they misunderstood the law completely.

And so what these people had lost sight of was what we see our Lord Jesus teaching in Luke 5 .32,

where he says, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. That none of us are righteous and therefore none of us qualify.

But we do qualify as those who are sinners who will come to repentance. In the larger context,

I think where Paul is going here, in case you still don't believe me, is that as he gets into who the law is for, for the lawless and the disobedient and all of these, you might ask yourself, what is the direction?

On this map, where are we driving to? And if we look at the very next paragraph, what does Paul talk about?

If you have an ESV, I'll ask this. What is the heading above verse 12? Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

Verse 15, Paul says, of whom I am the foremost. And so here Paul is saying, I am the foremost of sinners in the present tense.

And so how could he say that? And how could he be going there if he's about to say that, but all of you are righteous and you don't need the law.

Here the context is that the law is not for the righteous but for sinners.

And it's important for us to ask them, if this is the lawful use of the law, what was the lawless use of the law?

What was the wrong use of the law? It was this, that the teachers were teaching that one is made righteous.

One enhances their righteousness by the law. That is the wrong use of the law.

To look at the law and to say, by keeping this law, I can add something to myself before God.

By keeping this law, I can somehow refurbish myself to make myself better, to make myself more lovely, to make myself more righteous.

And what Paul is seeking to do here is to, and it's consistent with all of his teaching in the

New Testament, is he is bringing us under the law that we might see our need for Christ.

He is bringing us under the law so that in verse 11, it would be, we would be in accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God. Now that we don't need a law, now that we are better than the law, but that we are found guilty under the law.

And I think that we see here what is commonly called the three uses of the law laid out here in Paul's words in verses 9 and 10.

That the law is laid down not for the just, but for the lawless. That the lawless was given to condemn sin and to condemn sinners under the law.

The reformers called this the pedagogical use. It is a teaching function.

It was around this same time that as Paul was writing this letter, the Jewish philosopher

Philo was teaching this. This is a direct quote from his teaching. He said, the law has been delivered to us to pursue righteously what is righteous that we may attain righteousness.

Yeah. Wrong. The law has not been given that we might be delivered to pursue righteously what is righteous, that we may attain righteousness.

The law has been given so that all of us everywhere would know that none of us are righteous.

No, not one. And the 10 commandments, in case you thought that I was gearing up to tell you, brothers and sisters, you need to go and keep the 10 commandments to be righteous.

That is not what he is saying. But we can look at the 10 commandments and in it we see a mirror.

Imagine for a moment Ray Comfort up here. Not only has the

Lord said that if you murder, you violated the law, but the Lord Jesus said that if you have had anger in your heart, you've committed murder.

Ray Comfort would be up here telling you, have you ever committed adultery? Well, no, I've never cheated on my wife. Well, have you ever looked at a woman with lust in your heart for her?

And then you've committed adultery. Have you ever used the Lord's name as a swear word?

Have you ever told a lie? And you know how it goes if you've seen Ray Comfort. And then what does he say at the end?

He says, well then by your own admission, you are a blasphemer, a murderer, an adulterer, a liar at heart.

And where do blasphemers, murderers, adulterers and liars go? They go to hell.

They go where they rightly deserve to go. And here this is the first use of the law.

That all of us are brought under this law that our mouths, our boastful mouths might be stopped.

That we would see that we are sinners. We have a few people who are visiting here today.

I prayed it in the pastoral prayer. I say it to you now. You have not come into a room of righteous people.

You have come into a room of sinners. And what makes us Christians is this. That we do not put confidence in the works of the law, in the works of the flesh.

But we put confidence in this. That we need a Savior outside of ourselves. And that Savior is

Jesus Christ. And it is in Him that we believe. Some of you don't agree with me yet.

That this is for all of us. Some of you still say, we don't need it.

We are Christians. We don't need the law. The law is for them. But I want you to see how this is perfectly in line with the whole corpus of the teaching of Scripture.

In Romans 3 .19 we're told that the law was given to stop every mouth.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped.

It speaks to those who are under the law. And so if we say, but I'm a believer,

I'm not under the law. Then our mouths are not stopped then.

And we are not led to the gospel. Are you tracking that with me? So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable.

You see the global nature of this. It's not for them. The law is for us.

That it might bring knowledge of sin. We see in Romans 7 .7. What then shall we say? That the law is sin by no means.

The law is not sin. We've heard the law is good. Yet if it had been, not been for the law,

I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet.

It brings a knowledge of our sinfulness. It gives language to our sinful actions. The law was given that we might, under that law, be brought to Christ.

As we've been talking in our house about our children. I'm not sure how many of you are good at math.

I am not good at math. I'm not even that ashamed to admit it because I think some of you would have difficulty.

When my grade 8 son brings math homework home, I say, talk to me Anna. Go to her.

Right? We need a tutor to help him along.

I'm not capable of being that tutor. The law is a capable tutor that brings us to Christ.

Grade 9. You're grade 9. There. I win something. I had help in the back corner for my daughter.

He's in grade 9 dad. Galatians 3 .23. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law.

Imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian. Some would translate our tutor until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

If you think that I'm saying that we are under the law because we need to be justified by the law, that is absolutely wrong.

We are under the law that it might lead us as a tutor, as a guardian, that we might be justified by faith.

It shows us the sinfulness of our indwelling sin and our moral bankruptcy.

And there are some of you in this room perhaps that need to appreciate that bankruptcy. You need to come before the moral law of God to see what is in essence an extension of the very character, the attributes, the ethical and moral nature of God.

And see how you match up in the law and see that you are altogether lacking. And here

Martin Luther says exactly the way I think we should finish this section. He says, when the law drives you to the point of despair, go to the law.

And when the law drives you to the point of despair, let it drive you a little further, let it drive you straight into the arms of Jesus.

That we would see who we are as a measurement up and against who

God is. And that it would not lead us to boasting, but lead us to total emptiness.

That we would come to Jesus and rely on him alone. Many would see as well here, that's one lawful use of the law.

Many would see what's often called the second use of the law. Which is to restrain sin.

Here commentators have said, this is from John Stott. He says, all law is designed for those whose natural tendency it is not to keep it, but to break it.

We don't need speed limits on roads because people are inclined to go a hundred on highways.

We need speed limits on roads because people are inclined to go a hundred and fifty on highways. And here the law is given to restrain that evil.

It's been called the political use. And it's no, it is absolutely no coincidence that for every

Christian nation or every descendant of a Christian nation, that we have in many respects, wonderful laws that tend to peace, that are a derivative of the moral law of God.

Have you ever wondered why it is not only morally wrong, but illegal to steal. Or how it's morally wrong to murder, but it's also illegal to murder.

And even if we go back some distance, or if we go to other countries that still have more of this political use of the law, how the sword is wielded by the government to punish those who commit murder, and other things like this.

And we see it, I think in our own country, not to be too political. But we can see it in our own country that the further and further our country gets from upholding the moral law of God, the more and more our country descends into chaos.

It was given to restrain evil. And then lawful use number three, and I think

I have to convince you of this, is that it was given not as a system of works for Christians, but as a guide for Christians.

This is perhaps my most controversial point. That it's given as a guide for Christians.

And some will say, wait, wait, wait. It's for the unholy.

It's for all those who break these laws. How is it a guide for us? Because we would not know that these things were wrong, if they were not written here in the law.

We see it here at the end of verse 10. And whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of our blessed

God. Here the law gives us an ethical standard. It serves as a guideline for joyful obedience and Christian freedom.

Now some will say, they'll pull up Romans chapter 10 and verse 14 and say, but we read that Christ is the end of the law.

Does it not say that in Romans 10 14? That Christ is the end of the law. It does say that.

But there is not a comma or a period after that phrase. What does that phrase say? For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Meaning that the law still is for us. It still is a guide.

It still gives us the ethical, the character, the attributes of God.

But it's not there that we might obtain righteousness through it. It is there.

It is, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, but He is not the end of the law. It is there that we might have, if I can say it this way, guardrails.

Some will say, but we are led by the Spirit and not by the law.

Well, if we have the Spirit without any objective qualifiers, any guardrails by which to go, then all of us, some might say, well, the

Spirit told me to divorce my wife. The Spirit told me that I don't need to go to church.

The Spirit told me that I can do this or that or any other thing. But it is by the law.

And we see this used in the New Testament. Just before our

Lord said that He did not come to abolish the law, what did He expound in Matthew chapter 5? But the law.

You've heard it said this, but I say to you that. You've heard it said, you shall not do this, but I say this.

And here He is expounding and elaborating upon the law. You might say, okay, but that's in the Gospels. That's before the cross.

Go with me for a moment. Go with me to Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 1.

For those who say that the law serves no beneficial function in guiding the Christian today.

Here we see Paul get down on his knees, as it were, to address young children. He's speaking to them in the simplest of terms.

And I want to ask you, on what authority is He instructing them? Children, obey your parents in the

Lord, for this is right. Okay, that sounds very epistle -ish.

But then what does He say in verse 2? Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Here Paul is actually basing his ethical instruction to children upon the fifth commandment found in the

Ten Commandments. If Christ is the end of the law, period, that makes no sense.

But if Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, then it makes perfect sense. That in the law we have the basis for sound doctrine.

And this is, I don't want to chase bees and bonnets or anything like that, but this is one of the things that I want to encourage you.

In the Reformed Movement, we hear so much about sound doctrine, don't we? And we hear,

I think of a man who had a moral failure about a year and a half ago. And I heard people saying, okay, he had this moral failure, but he is, we need to really fast track him on the restoration path, because he's one of the good guys.

He's one of the guys that teaches sound doctrine. What would Paul say to that?

That a moral hiccup is okay if you teach sound doctrine. What does

Paul say? If you have a moral hiccup, if you have a disqualifying sin, it is not in accord with sound doctrine.

That sound doctrine is not just what we believe. It's not just what we say out loud. It's how we live.

It affects the ethic of our lives. And so sound doctrine is more than words.

It's more than thoughts. It's more than ideas. It is, to bring us all the way back to verse 5, it is love.

Love for God that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And so I ask you, do you have sound doctrine?

Not just a sound doctrine of the law, but a sound doctrine of the law that affects everything about you ethically.

And when we understand the law aright, I'm going to end with this. When we understand the law aright, that we understand that the law was given to show us our need for Christ.

When we understand that the law is given to promote good and restrain evil. When we understand that the law was given that we might live and might be conformed to the image of our blessed

Savior. Then when it is in accord with sound doctrine, it is in accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God. That any lawful use of the law must take us back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If it takes you away from the gospel, it's not the lawful use of the law. Here MacArthur says the gospel reveals

God's glory. That is the perfection of his person or attributes. Another says we understand is summing up the basis for all that Paul has said in verses 8 through 10.

That God's glorious good news is not exhausted in the laws prohibitions of unholy behavior.

It points rather to God in his ineffable splendor. That the great end of the law is not that we would be left looking at ourselves.

But the great end of the law is that we would be left looking at Jesus Christ and him and him alone.

And the accusations of the law. It's like water off a duck's back. Because our righteousness is not found in the law, it is found in Christ.

I like what John Bunyan says. I will end with this quote from him. He says, O hear thou may say,

O law, thou mayst roar against sin, but thou cannot reach me.

Thou mayst curse and condemn, but not my soul. For I have a righteous

Jesus, a holy Jesus, a soul saving Jesus.

And he hath delivered me from thy threats and thy curses and thy condemnations.

I am out of thy reach and out of thy bounds. I am brought into another covenant under better promises of life, under salvation, free promises to comfort me without my merit, even through the blood of Jesus.

The satisfaction given to God for me by him. So if that man were to come through that door today with his gospel of 613 commandments, would you know how to respond?

Let's pray that we would. We pray that you have been blessed by this recording.