The King beyond the Law – Law Matters: The Law and the King (5)

The King beyond the Law

Law Matters: The Law and the King (5)

The Law of God leads us to depend on and partake of the King of God.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Romans 3:21, 22

As the people of Israel had been promised a day when Shiloh would come to usher in the fullness of God’s promised Kingdom, so also they were assured that God would enable them to fulfill His Law and know all its promised blessings. He would do this by giving them a “circumcised” heart (Deut. 30:1-10). The people should look forward to a day when, by obeying the Word of God, they would turn to the Lord with all their hearts, walk in obedience to His statutes, and enjoy all the promised blessings of His Law.

The Word of God Who came to fulfill the Law by being under it, now stands above the Law of God as the very embodiment of its holiness, righteousness, and goodness. The Law of God illuminates our sin and teaches us to despair of ever being able to engender—much less sustain—the kind of righteousness the Law details, so that we might know the blessings of God. Instead, the Law points beyond itself to Shiloh and calls us to believe and trust in Him and His righteousness, even as we walk the path of the Law. We do not presume, through our obedience, to earn anything of favor with God. We hope to know that favor by fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, so that we run the course of God’s Law, looking beyond the Law to only One Who, by His obedience, can bring us into the precious and very great promises of God (Heb. 12:1, 2; 2 Pet. 1:4).

But we do not set the Law aside—not at all (Rom. 3:31)! Rather, we establish the Law as the path of holiness, righteousness, and goodness, the path by which we may be instructed concerning our sin and follow the steps of our Shiloh as He leads us daily into the greater privileges and responsibilities of His eternal Kingdom (Rom. 7:7, 12; 1 John 2:1-6). We look beyond the Law for our hope of salvation, righteousness, and promised blessings, even as we walk according to the Law in emulation of our King.

The Law thus, in a very real sense, leads us continually to Jesus, our High Priest, Prophet, and King, in Whom alone we know the fullness of God’s promised blessings and the righteousness which obtains to gain His favor (2 Cor. 1:20; Rom. 3:19-30).

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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.