God’s Law and Application

A firm grasp on the proper use of God’s law will take your application skills to the next level.

Use of the Law

In some Christian circles, the word “law”—or more specifically, the phrases “God’s law” or “law of Moses”—is a dirty word. Something to be avoided. We certainly don’t want to be guilty of enslaving people under law do we (Rom 6:14, Gal 3:23)?

However, if the law is nothing but a slave master to be thrown off in Christ, our friends the Gideons should stop including Psalms and Proverbs in their pocket New Testaments:

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation al the day.

Psalm 119:97

The one who keeps the law is a son with understanding, but a companion of gluttons shames his father

Proverbs 28:7

The problem, you see, was never with God’s law but with the way people try to use it. If we use to attain righteousness before God, then Christ died for no purpose (Gal 2:21). Those who use the law to become righteous will, in the end, lose not only righteousness but also the very benefits of the law (Rom 9:30-32).

So what is the proper use of the law? The Bible gives a few of them, but I’ll highlight just two of them relevant to the skill of Bible application.

First, the law of God provides knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20, 7:7-12). The law of God reveals God’s standards of right and wrong, true and false, moral and immoral. If you get rid of God’s law, you must invent some other standard by which to define good and evil, right and wrong. And a cursory glance at contemporary western culture ought to be enough to show what a failure such an experiment has been. We need the law to define sin and righteousness for us so we might become aware of how far we fall short. In this way, the law is like a mentor to lead us to find grace and mercy in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:23-4:7).

Second, the law of God shows us how life works best (Rom 13:9-10, Eph 6:2-3, James 2:8-13). While the law of God cannot make a sinner righteous, it can make any society a far more pleasant place to live. God made the world to work, such that keeping his law would result in great blessings and breaking his law would result in miserable curses. God is pleased when his people honor his law in submission to his appointed king, Jesus, the Son of David. The New Testament regularly roots its ethical instruction in the revealed law of God. Paul goes as far as to call it a “debt” or “obligation” to obey God through the empowering of God’s adopting Spirit (Rom 8:12).

Help with Application

So how does this doctrine help us to improve at applying the Bible?

In nearly any text, you can ask “use of the law” questions with respect to the author’s main point:

• What has God commanded in this text, and how do you and I measure up to that standard?
• How does God define truth and falsehood, right and wrong? How does our society define these things (with respect to the topic of the text)? How do you tend to define these things?
• How have others violated this command of God in the way they have treated you? How does that help you to distinguish between your responsibility and their responsibility in that situation?
• If we got rid of the standard of God’s law as highlighted in this text, what other standard might we invent to deal with these sorts of issues? What are some pseudo-standards that have been invented by our society?
• What would your life look like if you obeyed what this text commands? What would our church look like if it obeyed what this text commands? What would society look like if everyone obeyed what this text commands?
• What would submission to King Jesus look like according to this passage? How can we make more progress in such submission?

I am intentionally sidestepping matters of creation, gifts, strengths, grace, and redemption when I ask these questions. That’s not because such matters are unimportant, but only because the focus of this post is on the proper use of God’s law.

Sometimes, robust reflection on the proper use of God’s law will give us ample material to speak into the issues of our age: ethical dilemmas, attention to the environment, abortion, marriage, transgenderism, care for the poor, euthanasia, sexuality and sexual identity, greed, taxation—to name just a few.

Deepen your grasp of the proper use of the law, and you’ll take your application skills to the next level.