Lent and The Law
Lent 2003

Week of 24 March, 2003

Lectionary Readings

Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Following the lectionary guide (above) for your Scripture reading provides a number of inherent advantages. You know that Christians throughout the world are meditating upon the same Scriptures at the same time that you are. If you stick with it, over time you will read the entire Bible. Also, you are forced to grapple with difficult texts and so cannot wiggle out of uncomfortable passages by always returning to tried, true and favorite passages. But there are some disadvantages, too, like the surprising selections you discover from week to week.

Take this week. Christians are moving through the forty days of Lent, and the lectionary asks us to meditate upon the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 (they are also recorded in Deuteronomy 5:6-21). What is that about?! At first the connection between the lectionary text and the liturgical time of year seems artificial, even tenuous. But the more I thought about the purpose of Lent, part of which is to engage in personal reflection and penitence, I thought to myself, “what better way to do this than to meditate upon the Ten Commandments.”

To jog your memory, here is an abbreviated summary of the Ten Commandments that were given to the Hebrews about 3,000 years ago. Notice how the first four generally deal with our relationship to God, whereas the last six deal with our relationship to fellow human beings. Also notice how the first nine commandments prohibit certain actions, whereas the tenth commandment prohibits a type of desire or feeling.

• You shall have no other gods before Yahweh.
  
• You shall not make an idol of anything.
  
• You shall not misuse or take in vain God’s name.
  
• You shall keep the Sabbath day holy and wholly.
  
• Honor your mother and father.
  
• Do not murder.
  
• Do not commit adultery.
  
• Do not steal.
  
• Do not give false testimony against your neighbor.
  
• Do not covet.
  

To this we can add three further observations about God’s law or laws. First, in the Old Testament there are some 613 laws the Hebrews were given to obey; at least this is the standard number given by rabbinic scholars. These laws cover almost every aspect of life---economic, civil, social, family, dietary, and so on. Second, as if the moral weight of the Ten Commandments alone was not enough, in the Gospels Jesus broadens and deepens them. True, murder and adultery violate God’s law, but somehow and in some way anger and lust make us just as culpable (Matthew 5:17-48). Somehow the law is not only a matter of obedience to a rule (although it is that too), it is a matter of developing proper loves, for Jesus summarized the entire Law as loving God and loving one’s neighbor (Mark 12:29-31)

If the purpose of Lent is penitential reflection, then one needs a mirror of sorts to do the reflecting, and the Law is an excellent place to start. Whatever it is, the Law reflects the character of God, and the character He intends to develop in me: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The Law is not merely some onerous legal document to make me feel guilty, but rather a reminder of God’s personal claim upon every single aspect of my life.

As I meditate upon God’s Law I find myself tempted in two directions, both of which are entirely human and understandable, but both of which are also fundamentally unchristian. First, I am tempted to a sort of moral defensiveness that goes something like this: “I know I have not kept the commandments, but I am not really that bad, am I? I’m not worse, and maybe lots better, than many people.” But in my heart I know that any and all of these attempts at self-justification fail before a holy God. That, in turn, often leads me to the second temptation. In addition to self-defense there is spiritual despair. Thinking about the Law, and about how broadly and deeply I have sinned and still sin, can sometimes feel like too much to bear. Paul gave voice to this experience when he cried out in frustration, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?!” (Romans 7:24). But Christians should never yield to these two temptations because they stem from a wrong understanding of God’s Law.

Paul is very clear, and it is liberating rather than depressing to admit it: through works of the law I will never be justified in God’s sight (Romans 3:20, Galatians 3:11). In fact, something like the very opposite happens: the more I engage the Law, the less I keep it and the more aware I am of my moral poverty. Like a teacher or guide, the Law leads me to a consciousness of my sin. It convicts and accuses me. Paul even says that the more he meditated upon the tenth commandment that prohibits coveting, the more the Law multiplied and produced in him “coveting of every kind” (Romans 7:7-8). In a sense my moral despair is fully justified to the extent that the Law teaches me about my sin.

But the Good News of Jesus is that the Law leads me to Christ and a different kind of moral righteousness. Paul writes that he has no righteousness of his own (Philippians 3:9), that if righteousness could be obtained by keeping the Law, then Christ died needlessly (Galatians 2:21), and that the righteousness for which we hope is a righteousness “apart from the Law” (Romans 3:20). How so? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us. In some sense He abolished the law and its requirements that I could never keep (Galatians 3:13, Ephesians 2:15). So Jesus is the “end of the law for all who believe” (Romans 10:4). In sum, Paul is adamant: “we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law” (Romans 3:28). Rather than my own righteousness, which I never had anyway, God counts the perfect righteousness of Christ as my very own.

Paul summarizes all of this rather neatly in Romans 8:1-4. I still remember the deep impact that this passage had on me as a teenager when I first became a Christian:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by our sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to our sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

As a way to salvation or a way to please a holy God, Christ has ended and fulfilled the law for me. As God’s comprehensive claim upon every area of my life, His Law actually becomes a promise, a promise that through the power of His Spirit I can live in contentment rather than in covetousness, in fidelity rather than in idolatry, in love rather than in hate and murder, and so on. Joy and gratitude, not defensiveness and despair, are the order of the day.