"If one uses it lawfully ..."

WHEN LAW GOES WRONG: 1 Timothy 1:8 (part 2)

In the last post, I lifted up the uses of the law, implying also its purpose: a sign of God's holiness to His people, and thus a guide to their own -- and therefore also part of God's providential care for the world.

But what can Paul mean by "if one uses it lawfully" ? How can someone use the law "unlawfully"?

There are at least three ways in which this can happen.

1. The law can be used as a pretext for what is really lawless behavior, as a cover for attitudes, words and actions which are contrary to the intention of God's commands to us.

We see this in the Scripture: the priests and temple officials use the code on perfect sacrifices as a way of extorting money from the people and turning God's house into a "den of thieves"; Herod uses the law on marriage as a cover for his illicit relationship with Herodias and then compounds the error by using the law on hospitality as a pretext for killing John the Baptist; James excoriates a community for using the laws and customs on respect as a pretext for showing partiality and oppressing the needy (Jas 2); Christ rebukes the Church at Thyatira for allowing its fellowship to overwhelm its sense of God's justice (Rv 2). When the law becomes a cover or excuse for sin, we use the law unlawfully.

2. As I wrote in the last post, the purpose of the law is to be a guide for us -- not meaning "suggestions" or "not binding", anymore than the laws of physics and principles of engineering are "not binding" when building a skyscraper or a bridge so that it won't fall down. One expression of God's judgment upon the world's sin is when actions contrary to God's will follow to their natural consequences.

But when we rely on the external code rather than on the grace of God, transforming us from within, we are using the law unlawfully. One of the problems the Church in America faces in the twenty-first century is that it is widely perceived as being harsh and judgmental, at the same time that it is dangerously unserious about many areas of sin which Scripture addresses directly but which are difficult or unfashionable to talk about. The sin of the Pharisees was that of binding heavy burdens for others, while blocking their way to the true riches of the Kingdom. This sin is very much in evidence in the modern Church.

We are not saved by the law; we are saved by grace. And while our holiness will, if we follow Christ aright, take on the shape of the moral law, a people of grace are called to rely humbly on grace, and to be gracious in our dealings with others.

3. The law can also be used as a license for lording it over other people. It is always amazing to me that the Scripture describes Moses, who was God's instrument for bringing the Divine Code to Israel, as the humblest man there ever was. This is a call to us. The conundrum for leaders (especially) in the Church is that there is a certain kind of people who want to tell others what to do -- as Oswald Chambers puts it, who want to "make converts to their opinions"; conversely, there are those who want others to tell them what to do, so that they are spared the difficult work of creative thinking and application and responsible moral agency in the world. A certain codependency then begins to work, which can create a tidy fellowship but does not work God's redemptive work in the world.

The Greek for "lawfully" is nomimos -- its sense is nicely expressed in the Latin Vulgate with the expression legitime utatur. The law is a good gift from God; our call is to use it "legitimately", according to its true purpose, as an aid to the worship of God with full hearts and lives and to holy, life-affirming interactions with one another.


Prince Frederick, Maryland (Providence)