“Help me understand laws in the New Tewtament.”

April 2022 – Grace & Truth Magazine

QUESTION: Please help me to understand the following laws in the New Testament: law of liberty (James 1:25); and law of the Spirit, law of sin and law of death (Romans 8:2).

ANSWER: Let’s first take a quick look at what we usually think of when we read about the law in the Bible. We immediately think of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:2-17), which explicitly say, “You shall” or “You shall not.” Added to these were regulations God gave His people, the Israelites, about sacrifices, feasts and other religious matters as well as detailed instructions governing their everyday relationships in life. Thereby God spelled out how He wanted His chosen people to live their lives to please Him. “Do this and you will live” (Lk. 10:28 NKJV ), actually meant, “You will live long on earth.”

We have been looking specifically at what we often term “the law of Moses.” God gave this law to Israel on their journey through the wilderness after they were delivered from slavery in Egypt; this is recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Looking at this law, James 2:10 comments, “Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” Breaking so much as a single commandment makes one a law-breaker, a transgressor. Added to this, the Lord Jesus pointed out in Matthew 5 that we can even sin in our thoughts. James 4:17 tells us, “To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Indeed, other than our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son who became Man so that He would be able to die for us, no one ever kept the law perfectly.

The entire Old Testament, however, tells us more than this: “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:4,20). Notice, “who sins.” To sin is more than to break the law, for mankind sinned long before the law was given – so much so that God sent the flood to destroy corrupt, violent, wicked humankind off the face of the earth (Gen. 6–8). The entire Old Testament plainly states, “The soul who sins shall die.” Romans 3:22-23 sums up some 4,000 years of human history in the short sentence, “For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Chapter 6:23 adds, “For the wages of sin is death.” This is the law of sin and death, the principle that when we sin – and being sinners it is our nature to sin – the result inevitably is death. In ourselves we are powerless to change this even if we would like to do so.

This death is first of all spiritual death. God told Adam, “In the day that you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Upon eating of the forbidden fruit, our first parents did not immediately drop dead physically. However, they were afraid when they heard the voice of God in the garden and tried to hide from Him. Before we were saved we were dead in trespasses and sins, Ephesians 2:1 tells us, but verses 2-3 go on to describe how we once walked in these sins. This was before God by grace saved us, making us “alive together with Christ” (v.5). Man’s life of walking in sin sooner or later ends in physical death. The wonderful exception to this for believers will be the rapture, when the Lord suddenly takes all of them to Himself (see 1 Th. 4:13-18).

The person who has believed on the Lord is in Christ Jesus, and for him there is now no condemnation (Rom. 8:1). He “has passed from death into life,” according to John 5:24. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made [him] free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). The Holy Spirit indwells him, giving him liberty, joy and intelligence, enabling him to please God. He has not merely the desire, but he now has this new power to be pleasing to God. The Spirit of God works consistently to this end in his life.

It is true that a believer still has his old nature, what is called “the flesh,” within him, striving against the Spirit. But the Spirit strives against the flesh, wanting to lead the believer in right ways, which please the Lord. To whom will you now yield?

The law of liberty mentioned in James 1:25 bears this out. When I was still a lost sinner I had only the old nature that pleased itself, for they who are in the flesh cannot please God. Even the good things an unbeliever does that impress man are dead works before God. Isaiah 64:6 plainly declares, “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” They are certainly not suitable to offer to a holy God to gain His acceptance. However, the law of liberty offers me the opportunity to choose to please God, to be a doer of that which God sets before us in His Word. Thank God, a believer is no longer a slave to sin, but by the Spirit of God he can choose to do those things that please Him! May we believers make use of this law of liberty for blessing!

Answered by Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.