The Reality of the Law

It’s so easy to miss basics when we’re trying to come to terms with subtleties. It’s what is commonly called “missing the forest for the trees.” Sometimes we get so focused on the many and varied details of the trees—their height, leaf pattern, shade density, type of bark, whether they make noise when they fall if no one is around to hear, and so forth—that we forget when you put a whole bunch of them together, they make a forest. The same is true with the things of religion.

Take, for example, grace and works. We spend countless hours studying, dissecting, and debating the finer points of grace, works, and their relationship to one another that we often overlook why it’s even important to consider them. It’s important because of the simple reality of the law—what it’s for and which side of it we’re on. The other day, I was reminded of just how simple, real, and implacable the law can be.

Like many people, my commute to work is pretty routine. Over time, I’ve figured out the shortest, quickest route to work, including a few optional shortcuts depending on traffic and how many times I hit snooze. On this particular morning, my snooze meter was off the charts, and I was a little more than fashionably late for work. As a result, I went into shortcut mode. Now, because of construction, I had to take a shortcut to my shortcut. After all, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, not some highway engineer’s demented idea of a detour that ignores the finer points of my morning commute.

In fact, the road had been under construction for some time, and I had become accustomed to taking a few side streets near the construction zone. They were marked closed...check that, they were marked ROAD CLOSED, LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY. You see where this is going. Because I’d taken the route so many times, I figured I was local traffic and didn’t give it another thought. The “detour” was obviously for other people who, unlike me, were not local. Imagine my surprise, then, when I blithely swerved around the big sign in the middle of the street to the waiting lights of a patrol car and one of our city’s finest standing in the middle of my shortcut.

My first reaction was curiosity over what big bust was going down in my shortcut, then irritation over being delayed while taking my shortcut, and finally genuine dismay when the officer held his hand up and motioned me to pullover. I guessed that he wanted to fill me on what was going on, considerately keeping the citizenry apprised of important law enforcement developments. I guessed wrong. As I unrolled my window, the officer approached and began asking whether or not I’d noticed the big sign in the middle of the road, the one I’d just swerved to avoid. “Um, yes officer.” He next asked me why I had driven around the traffic sign in the middle of the road, the one proclaiming it closed. “Ummm, I was taking my shortcut to work, officer.” Finally, he asked me if I knew what that sign might be for and whether I thought it applied to me…very politely of course. “Um, I suppose it’s to keep people out…uhhhh…I thought maybe it was more of a traffic suggestion, you know, to kind of thin down traffic through my shortcut.” 

As the officer walked away with my driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance, I had that sinking feeling you get when you know you’re busted and you’re going to pay, in my case $62. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was my own reaction after intentionally ignoring the sign (numerous times), being caught in the act by an unbiased law enforcement officer, and admitting to willfully and knowingly disobeying the traffic sign.

As I drove away with my $62 dollar toll fee, I tried feverishly to concoct an excuse for why the law shouldn’t have applied to me. I didn’t want to be guilty of what I was clearly guilty of. There had to be some way of taking this to court and convincing the judge that I, who clearly broke the law, was somehow exempt from the law. I looked for a loophole, searched for an argument, mused about mitigating circumstances. Who or what had my transgression actually harmed? Weren’t there real criminals to apprehend, you know, ones who had broken a big law, not committed some silly little, no-harm traffic infraction? Perhaps pleading confusion would win the judge over—I was confused by all the other signs that everyone ignored anyway. There had to be something that would cause the judge to show mercy.

Then it stuck me like a blitzing linebacker: how could I be guilty of something that everyone else got away with. The law was inconsistently applied. Not everyone who went took the side street got a ticket. Besides, it was okay every other day to take my shortcut, why not today? The more I thought about it, the more I  burned with anger; the more my anger burned, the more righteous indignation swelled within my heart; and the more righteously indignant I became, the more I lamented the injustice of being found guilty of something others got away with. Every fiber of my being cried out, “It’s not fair!” But it was. I knew the law; I broke the law; I was busted by the law.

The truth of the matter is that, while I may have been confused and among only the few who got caught, I knew I was breaking the law. I just didn’t think it was that big of a deal, especially since I’d obeyed hundreds of other laws thousands of times before. And that’s the cold reality of the law: regardless of what I think, it’s not a respecter of persons, circumstances, our understanding, or even our past obedience. It draws a clear demarcation between guilt and innocence. Whether it’s big or little, important or trivial, the law exists to condemn, and that’s about it. Once we break it, we can’t un-break it; but we can be punished for it.

Paul wrote in Romans 7:7 that he would not know what sin was except through the law. We know that we are guilty when we stand face-to-face with the law, which is why those who God judges will stand speechless before Him, unable to raise even a whisper of an excuse (Romans 1:20). Like a glass shattered in a thousand pieces, the law lies broken before each one of us, dispassionately testifying to our guilt. We can only stand silently awaiting our punishment.

The reality of the law acts like a cold, wet blanket on all of our reasons why we shouldn’t be judged. I realized this when I wrestled with every reason why I should get off. The more reasons I came up with, the more lame they all began to sound, especially when I imagined laying them out at traffic court. No matter how convincing they seemed to me (or rather how convincing I wanted them to be) any judge would see through the rice paper thin veneer of my excuses and find the law clearly broken. I was without excuse, although I wanted desperately to make one for the simple reason that I didn’t want to be condemned. I didn’t want to be guilty or carry the shame that goes along with it. If a traffic judge sees the law clearly broken, how much more will God see his law, from the least to the greatest, broken before Him? And we all stand guilty as charged before a Holy Judge.

Because the law is dispassionate, its judgment is dispassionate. Once it’s broken, the law cannot do anything but condemn. The law breaker is judged according to the law, leaving him one stomach turning step away from certain punishment. If that were the end, there’d be no point in continuing, but thanks to a merciful God it’s not. In his letter to the Galatians (3:24), Paul wrote that the law acts like a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. Like a schoolmaster, the law stands above us judging our work, grading us on a pass/fail basis. If we’re perceptive students, we realize that we all fall short of the law, and obedience to it is beyond us once it falls broken before us. Thus, continuing to follow the law in hope of living up to it, or being justified by it, is the ultimate exercise in futility. But if we allow the law to lead us to Christ, we are set free from its judgment and become justified through Christ. But how can that be?

It can be because Christ paid the penalty for our sin and ransomed us from the prison we created for ourselves. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” Notice that redemption and forgiveness of our sins is something we have right now in Christ. We fall short of the law, stand guilty as charged, but Christ bears our punishment, thus satisfying God’s justice and restoring our freedom. However, while the ransom was paid when Christ died on the cross, it doesn’t become effective for us until we receive it by faith. It’s like standing before the judge and admitting our guilt, while flashing a paid-in-full receipt. We can’t flash the receipt until we receive it from the one who paid for it..

But it gets better. Because Christ acts as our substitute, not just our benefactor, there is no longer any charge against us. There is no record that the law was ever broken on our behalf. Paul summed it up in one of the most comforting passages in the entire New Testament, Romans 8:1-4, where he proclaims, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” He makes it even plainer in Colossians (2:13-14) where he proclaims, “[God] forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away nailing it to the cross.” When you place your faith in Christ, you actually fulfill the requirements of the law through him. Instead of guilty and awaiting punishment, you are free and have no fear of judgment. Simply put, your faith justifies you.

So, there’s the forest. When we break the law, we suffer the consequences because we can’t un-break it. Even when we suffer punishment, like my paying for a ticket, the law still records us as law breakers, just ask your insurance company. However, unlike traffic violations, our “ticket” for breaking God’s law is eternal punishment, not a $62 fine. Our only hope is if it’s paid for us. By God’s grace and Christ’s finished work, it is—if we place our faith in the payment.

We can only understand grace and works once we understand the forest. The forest for us is that we stand before a broken law, shattered like a crystal vase on a marble floor by our disobedience. The law can’t be pieced back together; it simply pronounces our guilt as we pitifully stand amongst the carnage. No amount of good works will repair the carnage already at our feet, and nothing short of grace can deliver us from the mess we’ve made.