Not unto Salvation, but for the sake of Salvation – Interpreting the Law of God (10)

Not unto Salvation, but for the sake of Salvation

Interpreting the Law of God (10)

The Law won’t save you; but it will get you saved.

“You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.” Leviticus 18:5

Salvation, we know, is of the Lord (Ps. 3:8). It is all of grace, a gift freely bestowed at the Father’s good pleasure on those whom He has chosen for Himself. Salvation is of the Lord.

But salvation is not of God’s Law. Only after God had delivered Israel out of Egypt, deposited them safely on the other side of the Red Sea, destroyed their enemies, and brought them to the safety of His holy mountain—only after all that did He give them His Law.

Israel was redeemed and free to know the Lord. Now the question was, Would they live unto Him?

Well, how could they do that unless they knew what He required? And how could He communicate those requirements to them except by words? And what better way to impart words designed to give saved people real life with God than by encoding them in Law?

The Law of God shows saved sinners how to enjoy salvation. The Law is not unto salvation, but for the sake of salvation—so that we might fully enjoy what we have been freely given.

We are wrong, therefore, if we try to make the Law, or obedience to it, a kind of redeeming act. For example, if we think bringing our nation’s laws into better conformity with the Law of God—a thing most to be desired, I believe—will somehow save our nation, we are mistaken.

By the same token, if we think we can lead redeemed and saved people to a full and joyous experience of eternal life in Jesus Christ apart from the Law of God, we’re also mistaken.

A third governing principle for interpreting the Law of God is that we should expect the Law, especially in its deeper and more important meanings (remember Paul in 1 Cor. 9), to help us enter more fully into the salvation we have received by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Thus the Law helps saved sinners overcome the power of sin by learning to do what is holy and righteous and good under the tutelage and in the power of God’s Spirit (Rom. 7:12; 12:21; Ezek. 36:26, 27; 1 Cor. 2:12, 13).

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.