Law and Gospel, part II

As reviewed in part I, the function of God’s law is to reveal sin, leading those under the law to despair of their own unrighteousness and drive them to the cross.  One of the biggest obstacles to understanding the proper use of the law is overcoming the belief that we are able to keep it perfectly.  Historically, Adventists have maintained they are the only denomination that keeps “all of God’s law.” The Adventist pioneers taught that even the name of the church was a “standing rebuke” to the Protestants who did not fully keep God’s law¹.  While this belief may not permeate all the branches of Adventism today, many are still confused about their ability to keep God’s law.

In commenting on Romans 7:5-8, Donald Grey Barnhouse makes some important observations regarding the magnitude of God’s law and our inability to stand under the weight of its requirements.

“The law of Moses affected Israel in the same way that Prohibition affected the United States, but the rebellion aroused by the Mosaic law was much more widespread because the law of Moses extended to <u>every thought and action</u> of the human heart.  Jesus Himself summed it up, in Mark 12:30-31: ‘You shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength...you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Any unbeliever who thinks that he remotely approaches fulfillment of this law is woefully ignorant of the holiness of its demands.

For hundreds of years the human race lived without the law of God, although there was a general sense of right and wrong.  The codes of Hammurabi and Lipit Ishtar made provision for property and personal safety; but these laws were like a small fence at the edge of a precipice; they allowed the individual to roam in any other direction at will. The law of God was a wall which hemmed a man on every side; it was a chain, an unbearable yoke, as Peter reminded his fellow Jews (Acts 15:10).

The law of God acted upon the hearts of Israel like the fall of the first rope on the neck of a wild horse.  His heavings and buckings are nothing compared to what the human heart felt when the law of God was imposed upon body, mind, and soul.  Before the law, it was possible for God to deal with men without reference to its demands.  But when the law came, the flesh reacted to it like gunpowder to a lighted match.” (Donald Grey Barnhouse, Commentary on Romans, vol. 3, pg. 213-214).

We must not neglect to give the law its proper function–to “stop every mouth” and to “hold the whole world accountable to God.” (Romans 3:19).  Anyone who boasts in the keeping of the law does not realize the magnitude of what the law requires and risks missing the Savior who saves us from its condemnation.

Read more in part III.
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1. Ellen G. White, Testimonies to the Church, vol. 1, pg. 223-224