THE SWEETNESS OF THE LAW - Efforts at spiritual formation in Christlikeness must reverse the process of distancing the soul from God and bring it back into union with him. The law of God can help us do that.
The written law God gave the Israelites is one of the greatest gifts of grace God has conveyed to the human race. It was given as a meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways.
When those walking in personal relationship with him receive, study, and internalize his law into their heart, it quickens and restores connection and order to the flagging soul. Viewing the law as something we can or must achieve (self-idolatry), however, repeats the degradation of the law committed by the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. It is turned from a pathway of grace to an instrument of cultural self-righteousness and human oppression.
Today, we in the Western world live in an antinomian culture. (Antinomian means “against the law.”) This tendency is based upon the mistaken conclusion—rejected by Paul—that since we are not justified by keeping the law but rather through our personal relationship of confidence in Jesus, we have no essential use for the law and can disregard it.
This tendency annuls the law, which is what Jesus said not to do (see Matthew 5:19). The presence of the Spirit and of grace is not meant to set the law aside but to enable conformity to it from an inwardly transformed personality. The “royal law” of love (James 2:8), abundantly spelled out in Jesus and his teaching, includes all that was essential in the older law, which he fulfilled and enables us to fulfill through constant discipleship to him.
One whose aim is anything less than obedience to the law of God in the Spirit and power of Jesus will never have a soul at rest in God and will never advance significantly in spiritual transformation into Christlikeness.
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