Grace vs. Law?

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them 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. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."   -- Matthew 5:17-20

     Here is a place where Jesus speaks clearly to the crowd, and yet our human nature makes us want to say, "Well, that isn't what He actually means. After all, isn't it also written, '. . .  you are not under law but under grace?' So we do not have to worry about the Law anymore!"

     It is true that Paul penned those words in the book of Romans, but it is also true that those words comprise just a part of the story.  To flesh out Paul's thought a bit, we need to peek back one verse. Then we will see he wrote: "Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." (Romans 6:13-14) It is not an end to the Law that Paul writes of, but rather an end to our enslavement to sin.

     When he says, "you are not under law but under grace," Paul is not saying that the work of Christ on the cross has put an end to the Law. If he did, he would have directly contradicted the words of the Lord and proven himself  to be "a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways" as James puts it in chapter 1 verse 8 of his epistle. Rather, Paul is saying that, once you have accepted Christ as Lord,  sin no longer has a grip on you--it is no longer your master, but the Lord in His grace has now taken upon Himself that position, which was rightfully His to begin with. Instead of forcing obedience to His will, he merely uses the Law to bring to light our true nature and then ignites His grace as a brilliant beacon to show us the only safe path. It is, of course, our choice whether we will accept it or not, but once we have seen what the light of the Law has exposed in the dark parts of our hearts, we would be fools not to embrace His offer. For once the Law has illuminated us, we see that we are not merely knee-deep in sin, we are drowning in it. So grace is the lifeline offered to our pitiable state, and the Law is the means of exposing it.

     Jesus says plainly to us, "until heaven and earth pass away... not a dot will pass from the Law." This has not happened yet, and so we are still subject to scrutiny by the Law. So where is the good news in this story; where is the grace? It is just this--He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. We, at our dead-level best, can never hope to perfectly keep the Law. We see in the very first commandment our own death spelled out, for not a one of us has always, in every way, and in every thought put God first above all else.

     The hope is not in what we can do, but in the simple fact that Jesus did as He said He would--He fulfilled the Law. He kept it to the letter, never missing the mark nor obscuring some point of it with sin, self-righteousness, or by trying to justify what He knew was wrong. He very simply and very humbly kept the Law--then submitted to a gruesome death to appease for all time the wrath of God against sin. That is the very grace He offers--that we take His death as our own, and through it live a new life. He asks only that we live this new life as He did--utterly in compliance with the will of God, giving Him our utmost love and respect and receiving His glorious devotion and sublime peace in return. This gracious gift is ours to take, but we must commit our all to that lifeline, allowing Him to raise us up entirely, without trying to keep one toe in the sea of death.

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."Galatians 5:1

Scripture quotations are from the ESV^® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.