LAW AND SALVATION

LAW AND SALVATION

“For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM." Gal. 3:10

This one law of God carries as an integral part of it the appropriate penalties or sanctions to enforce its demands. Cf. Gal. 3:10; Rom. 4:15; 2 Cor. 3:7; Rom. 8:2. A law without a penalty is just good advice, you can take it or leave it. To emasculate the law of its penalties, and to call it: law, is a serious misnomer, can only confuse the minds of men, and finally bring all law into contempt or indifference, whether human or divine law. In ther long run, such a procedure may even empty Calvary of its deepest meaning.

Hypothetically, the law could save if men would keep it. Cf. Lev. 18:5; Rom. 10:5; 2:13. But this doing of the law had to be perfect. Cf. Gal. 3:10; James 2:10.  Did not the law provide for failure to keep it. Answer: yes. But at that moment one was thrown on the mercy and grace of God. God did not relax his standard. He merely provided a way to satisfy the holy penalty thus incurred.

 It was impossible, of course, for any Israelite or anyone else, to keep “all” the commandments of the law (James 2:10), and therefore they were all under the “curse” of the law. See Deut. 27:26. All men were already under God’s universal curse because of sin (Gen. 3:17-19), but now the curse becomes more explicit because the definition of sin has become more explicit. No one in Israel could any longer offer the excuse that they did not know what sin was, because the law as given to Moses had spelled it out quite clearly. “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law” (Rom. 7:7).