The Goodness of the Law

By Rev. David Petersen

Too many choices can disable even the keenest of minds. Don’t tell her I told you, but my wife cannot order at a nice restaurant until the waiter is standing over her. As long as there is time to consider the possibilities, she will. If the waiter actually waited for her to be ready, we’d never order. She needs the deadline, the threat of the waiter’s annoyance, to make up her mind.

A deadline is a positive function of the Law. God uses the Law not only to accuse us but also to guide and teach us. The Law serves as external discipline and provides an objective standard. The Law’s primary function is to accuse fallen men, and it always does. Even when the Law is guiding and teaching us, it accuses us. It establishes a perfect standard. The contrast of our reality, the thoughts of our hearts, if not always the works of our hands, with this standard shows us our sin and our desperate need for a Savior. That is God’s ultimate purpose with the Law: to show us that we need a Savior. That Savior is given in the Gospel, the Good News of God’s forgiving love for men in Jesus Christ.

But the Law does not only accuse us. The Law is not merely accusations; it is also God’s wisdom. Along with accusing, it also guides and teaches us. It shows us the mind of God and therefore the best and most fulfilling way to live. It helps us to see the needs of others and places us into reciprocal communities of duties, responsibilities, rights, and relationships. Thus, the Law also provides an external discipline conducive to good works, which flow from faith.

Sometimes the Law is easy to keep. It is easy to love your mother when she has just made your favorite meal and given you a present. When all is well we can sometimes feel good works and good motives as quickly and easily as we feel our desires for pleasure. But not always. Not even mostly. Mostly our fallen flesh infects our thinking. It is not so easy to be nice, to feel good inside, when things don’t go our way. The new man and the old man are at war inside of us. We do not always do the good that we want to do. Sometimes we don’t even know what is good. Between Satan’s trickery and our own internal battlefield, we can easily become confused. It is not that the new man needs coercion. God has borne him anew in the waters of Holy Baptism. He is morally and spiritually perfect. But he is not omniscient. Even the new man can learn from God’s Wisdom, from the Law. But we can’t separate the old and new man inside of us. We, concrete men, still abiding in this living death, still waiting for the good work God has begun in us to be completed in the day of Jesus Christ, we need all that God gives. We need the Law’s guidance, accusations, and instructions even as we need the Holy Absolution, the Lord’s Supper, Prayer, and the Bible. The day will come when we won’t need these things the way we now do, but until then our life depends upon them.

In terms of the Law, mostly what we need is to be exposed and driven to our knees .We need to know and feel our need for a Savior so that we will flee to God’s mercy in Jesus Christ. But God gives us more than that. He also gives us guidance and instruction. Sometimes we just need a curb, a deadline, a mild threat to keep us on track, like a waiter tapping his foot or a school bell that establishes the start of class. We certainly don’t enjoy that discipline. We’d rather get out of bed when we feel like it. We’d rather the whole world waited on us. A waiter can actually make my wife nervous. She feels under pressure. But the reality, whether she’ll admit it or not, is that she needs a little push. By such means, God directs and guides us. He chastens those whom He loves. He cares about the details of our lives. And He uses the Law to help us.

The Law in all its functions is good and is good for us. Even its accusing is good. We are not under the Law. We are free. But we still benefit from the Law. For nothing in God, and nothing from God, is evil, and everything in God, and everything from God, is for us and for our good, for He Himself is good and His mercy endures forever.

I hope, therefore, that you will have some sympathy for my sometimes indecisive wife, for the Law, even its positive functions, can be hard to bear. Not everything that is good for us is as sweet as Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. But as much as I hope for that sympathy for her, I confess that even more, I am hoping that Mrs. Stiegemeyer and Pr. Pauls, to whom this article is given a full three weeks after the deadline, will remember that God desires mercy and not sacrifice.

Rev. David Petersen is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is also on the Higher Things editorial board. His e-mail address is David.H.Petersen@att.net.