For some crazy reason, Christians can confess justification by faith alone on Sunday and spend Monday trying to earn back the favor of God. This person who thinks this way may have a high view of God’s commandments and a sincere desire to obey them, yet he has asked his obedience to do what God never assigned to it.
The order of God’s dealings with Abraham and Israel helps us understand how this happens.
God promised Abraham blessing through his seed long before the law was delivered at Sinai, and Paul insists that the law, which came centuries later, could not annul this promise or change the way the inheritance would be received (Gal. 3:17–19).
But the fact that God gives a promise before the law brings up a question. Why did God give the law after he had given the promise?
Edward Fisher speaks of the covenant of works being renewed at Sinai, language that, if we aren’t careful, can sound as though God had placed Israel back on a path to life through obedience. However, Fisher says that God intended “that man, being thereby convinced of his weakness, might flee to Christ”.1
The commandments were given to expose what God requires, including the love of Him and neighbor that reaches beyond outward conduct into the heart. Paul argues that the law was added because of transgressions and that Scripture has shut up all under sin, so that the promise might be given through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:19, 22). Its searching work serves the promise by making clear why we need the righteousness of another.
At the opening of the Ten Commandments, God identifies himself as the Lord who brought Israel out of Egypt before he tells the people what to do (Exod. 20:2). Thomas Boston points to that preface as a witness to the promise God made to Abraham, and he understands the commandments that follow as a rule of life for those who receive God’s promise by faith.2 Deliverance from Egypt placed the nation among a people who heard God’s word and received his ordinances, although belonging to that nation did not mean that every Israelite trusted the promised seed. The law could therefore confront a self-righteous hearer with the demands he could never meet, while directing a believer who knew the Lord’s mercy.
For those who belong to Christ, the commandments continue to speak with their full claim upon the heart and life. Jesus has borne the curse of the law for his people, and Paul can therefore say that there is no condemnation for those who are in him (Gal. 3:13; Rom. 8:1). Selfishness remains sin and obedience remains a duty, while the command now reaches the believer through the Mediator who has already brought him near to God. Fisher explains the order of this life in the words: “Live, and do this”.3
There is room in that order for a conscience to be searched and for sin to be confessed without making repentance a new price of admission. When the law shows a Christian that he has spoken cruelly to his family, neglected a neighbor, or protected a cherished sin, he should take its judgment seriously. He can confess the wrong, seek forgiveness from those he has harmed, and turn toward the obedience Christ commands, while resting his acceptance before God upon Christ’s finished work. The law has exposed something real, and the gospel tells him where to go with it.
So, the next time the commandments expose your sin, hear their demand in its full strength and resist the urge to bargain for God’s favor with a promise to do better.
Instead, bring the sin they uncover to Christ, whose righteousness answers the demand you could never meet and whose mercy receives sinners who come to him.
Then take up the obedience set before you, knowing that the Lord who commands you has already given you life in his Son.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity: In Two Parts, with notes by Thomas Boston (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1850; modernized by William H. Gross, 2014), 54.
Ibid., 47.
Ibid., 148.