Law & Gospel 2
Opening song: christ the Lord is risen today (vs 4 & chorus)
Call to worship: Psalm 119.161-168 {Bobby}
song:
In Christ Alone
Historical reading:
pastor Andrew loginow
Apostles' Creed
song: Christ is risen (come awake)
Confession & Pardon:
pastor Brett eckel
song: Doxology
song: See the destined day arise
Sermon:
dr. alex loginow
Law & Gospel
Matt 5.17-20
“I’ve done no wrong; sweet Jesus, hear my prayer; look down, look down; sweet Jesus doesn’t care.” These lyrics are from the opening song of the musical, Les Mis. Les Mis is set around the Paris Uprising of 1832 and the story is seen primarily through the eyes of protagonist, Jean Valjean. The narrative opens with Jean Valjean released from prison after 19 years. Originally sentenced to 5 years for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family, Valjean added 14 more years along the way for several escape attempts. Standing over Valjean in prison is his primary antagonist police inspector Javert.
Les Mis is one of the clearest and most beautiful pictures of Law and Gospel ever portrayed in art. After Jean Valjean is released from prison the only people who will let this convict stay with them is the bishop and nuns at the town church. Hardened and desperate, Valjean steals silverware from the parish and is subsequently stopped by the police. But when the authorities question the clergyman about the stolen silverware, the conversation does not go the way Valjean assumed. The bishop tells the police not only did he give Valjean the silverware, but also Valjean forgot some candlesticks as well. The pastor then encourages Valjean to move foreword from this mercy and build a life.
Bitter and confused, Valjean steals again before his heart is changed and he repents. The problem is that Valjean repents after the crime is reported and police inspector Javert is convinced the repeat offended must return to prison. From that point on Les Mis tells the story of Jean Valjean’s life of good works born out of his redemption and Javert’s perpetual pursuit of justice to find and incarcerate Valjean. Javert is the personification of the Law. His highest concern is the administration of justice. Valjean broke the law and Javert spends his life chasing Valjean in the name of justice.
In contrast Jean Valjean is the personification of grace or the gospel. Valjean was guilty and the bishop showed him grace. Valjean justly deserved to go to jail; he broke the law. But he was forgiven and the forgiveness he experienced changed his life.
Last week Pastor Kevin preached our 1st sermon on Law and gospel. He explained why God’s Law and gospel are both nonnegotiable. This morning we will look at Law and gospel with a focus on how God’s Law applies to the church. What does the Law mean for us today? How do we think through the imperatives of Scripture, the commands of Scripture, with the understanding that we are saved by grace alone? But before we do so we must briefly review what Pastor Kevin covered last week because we can never preach the imperatives of the Bible apart from the indicatives; we can never preach the commands of Scripture without the good news of what God has done in Christ. We can never preach the Law without the gospel.
Review of Law and Gospel
And we cannot preach the gospel without first preaching the Law. There is no one who is a regenerate Christian who does not understand that that he or she is a sinner. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1.8). You cannot understand the good news without understanding the bad news and the bad news is that we have sinned against God, we have broken God’s Law, and we justly deserve death and eternal conscious punishment in hell because of our rebellion against God’s law. We are like Jean Valjean, guilty of breaking the law and, like Javert; God’s Law relentlessly pursues us.
Adam was given God’s Law in the command to abstain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and because Adam was created in God’s image Adam had God’s law written on his heart; Adam’s conscience testified to God’s Law. The Law reveals the character of God and that means even though the Law wasn’t fully revealed until Mt. Sinai; the Law has always been required of God’s creatures. Murder was wrong before God gave Moses the 10 Commandments; adultery was wrong even before the formal giving of the Law. And when Adam sinned; when Adam missed the mark of God’s Law; all of humanity and all of creation fell in Adam.
But where sin was found, grace did abound. Immediately after Adam sinned God gave him the good news in Genesis 3.15. There would be a man, a last Adam, who would crush the serpent’s head, and the manner by which this man would crush the serpent’s head would be by the serpent bruising this man’s heel. And the rest of the Old Testament progressively leads us through redemptive history to the Gospels where it is revealed that this man is actually God incarnate. The 2nd person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us when he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. His name is Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus kept God’s law perfectly. Jesus never sinned. And Jesus offered his righteous sinless life on the cross to God to pay the penalty for the sins of his people. On the cross Jesus was the substitute who paid the penalty to atone for the sins of the elect. His heel was bruised. Justice was satisfied. YHWH told Adam the day Adam ate of the fruit of the tree he would surely die. Jesus, who never sinned in though, word, or deed, who never sinned by what he did or by what he left undone, Jesus, who always loved the Lord his God with all of his heart, Jesus who always loved his neighbor as himself, Jesus experienced the curse of God’s Law.
And it was through this bruising of his heel that Jesus crushed the serpent’s head. Jesus experienced the curse of death for our sins in order to satisfy the justice of God but death could not hold Jesus because Jesus wasn’t guilty. So on the 3rd day Jesus walked out of the tomb resurrected from the dead. And now everyone who repents of their sin and believes in the gospel will be saved from the just penalty for their sin.
To repent means to confess and turn. It means to confess that you are a sinner and to turn away from your sin. To believe means to have faith in Christ alone. The Reformed tradition has always defined faith with 3 facets: knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge means that you know who Jesus is and what Jesus did – everything I just rehearsed about the person and work of Christ.
But knowledge alone is insufficient to save, you must also assent. Assent means that you believe all of the doctrine about who Jesus is and what Jesus did to be true. But even knowledge and assent fall short of saving faith without trust. Trust means that you’re resting in Christ alone to save you. You are placing the full weight of your hope on Jesus to atone for your sins. You understand that there’s nothing you can do to earn God’s favor. God forgives you and is pleased with you in Christ alone.
The Moral Use of the Law
If that’s true, if we’re saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, if there’s nothing we can ever do to earn God’s favor, if in Christ God has forgiven all of our sins, past, present, and future, and if our righteous standing before God is based exclusively on the righteousness of Jesus alone, then how do we think about the commands of Scripture? How do we apply God’s Law to our lives and in Christ Community Church? How do we interpret the imperatives of the Bible without falling into 1 of the 2 ditches on each side of the road: legalism and lawlessness? Jesus helps us with this as we consider our text from Matthew 5.17-20.
Understanding the setting of this pericope is essential if we are to know what to do with the Bible’s imperatives. Matthew chapters 5-7 summarizes for us the greatest sermon ever preached – the Sermon on the Mount. We can’t miss what Matthew is doing with his narrative if we want to understand the Sermon on the Mount and how to apply God’s Law in the New Covenant. Dispensational and progressive protestants misunderstand God’s Law because they fail t understand what Jesus is doing here.
Throughout our Exodus series we noted that Matthew reveals to us Jesus is recapitulating the experience of Moses and the story of Israel. Just as Moses was saved from being aborted by Pharaoh, so Jesus was saved from being aborted by Herod. Just as God called his son Israel out of Egypt, he also called his son Jesus out of Egypt after Herod died. Just as Israel went through the Red Sea and into the wilderness for 40 years, Jesus went through the waters of baptism and into the wilderness for 40 days.
And then just as Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Law of God, Jesus now goes up the mount to preach the law of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. This is the key for us to understand how to apply the Law – Jesus does not give a new law. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ Christ-centered exposition of the Law from Genesis-Deuteronomy. God’s Law never changes because the Law reveals God’s character; it is eternal. The difference is that the Law is fulfilled in Christ.
Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill the Law. The word fulfill is the Greek word πληρόω, which means, “to give the true or complete meaning to something.” Jesus did not abolish God’s Law; Jesus gave the true or complete meaning of God’s Law. Jesus says that the Law will not pass away until heaven or earth pass away, which is never. The Law is intricately connected to God’s creation because God’s creation is subjected to his Law, which reveals his character.
Because that’s true Jesus rebukes those who relax the Law and teach others to do the same and Jesus says those who do and teach the Law are great. Those who enter the kingdom of heaven are those whose righteousness exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes and Pharisees were self-righteous because they believed they were keeping the Law on their own strength and they were not interpreting the Law in light of Christ. But the truth is that we cannot keep the Law and Jesus is the only one who did so those who have a righteousness worthy of the kingdom of heaven are those who place their faith in the only truly righteous one – Jesus Christ.
Through the teaching of Jesus and his Apostles, the New Testament reveals to us that Jesus Christ fulfills both the civil and ceremonial aspects of the Law. The civil aspect of the Law was fulfilled in Christ because he came through the nation of Israel. Israel’s theocratic distinction revealed the character of God to the nations until God himself came for the nations. Under the New Covenant the Kingdom of God is not marked by ethnicity, it’s not marked by blood and soil, but by faith, and the Word, by water, and bread and wine.
The ceremonial aspect of the Law was also fulfilled in Christ because Christ is the true and final sacrifice for sins. The Old Covenant sacrificial system with its priesthood, animal sacrifices, and liturgical calendar were all leading us to Calvary. There is no longer any need for a priesthood or sacrifices because Jesus is the true and final great high priest and Jesus is the true and final sacrifice. On the cross Jesus declared, “It is finished.” Not only is there no longer any need for sacrifices, but offering sacrifices to God would, in fact, be sacrilegious because it would nullify the cross of Christ.
The portions of the Law pertaining to civil regulations and religious ceremonies are completed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and so the only aspect of the Law that remains – and it does remain – is the moral aspect of the Law. We just spent 10 weeks preaching through the 10 Commandments and how they are still required for God’s people. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is an exposition of the 10 Commandments. In fact, if you were to look at every single command, every single imperative, every single ethical demand of Scripture, every single one of them can be traced to 1 of the 10 Commandments. There is not 1 single imperative in the New Testament that is not an application of 1 of the 10 Commandments.
But this has always been true. The moral aspect of the Law was required for Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Adam sinned when he broke the 1st Commandment by making himself God in matters of the knowledge of good and evil. Cain sinned when he murdered Able. Abraham sinned when he committed adultery against Sarah with Hagar. Jacob sinned when he bore false witness against his father.
The same is true for us. God’s moral law is eternal. But what is important for us to always remember is that we cannot follow God’s moral law in order to be righteous before God. Jesus is the only one who kept the Law and it is exclusively through faith in Jesus that we are right before God and God is pleased with us. That means if you are a Christian there is nothing you can ever say or ever do to make God love you more and there’s nothing you can ever say or ever do to make God love you less. If you are a Christian God loves you like he loves Jesus because you are in Christ.
And so the gospel frees us from the burden of the Law so that we can rejoice in the Law. When God works regeneration in our hearts he gives us the gift of faith and fills us with the Holy Spirit. It is from this stance – from the stance of already justified, already possessing a new heart, indwelt by the Spirit – that we are able to delight in God’s will and walk in God’s ways to the glory of God’s name. We obey the Law not to be righteous before God, but because we are already counted righteous before God in Christ, we obey God’s Law for his glory and for our good.
We obey God’s Law for his glory. The Law reveals the character of God and God created us in his image so he created us to mirror his character. God is our creator and rightfully demands how his creatures think, speak, and act. God is glorified when we obey his Law because he rightfully deserves obedience.
We also obey God’s Law for our own good. Obedience to the Law of God, rightly understood in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, produces human flourishing. Countless surveys have suggested that the happiest and most content people in the world are religious and go to church and stay faithful in their marriage. Society benefits everyone when people don’t murder and don’t steal and tell the truth. This isn’t a coincidence. These are the 10 Commandments.
These things are not true simply because family values and conservative values are the most beneficial. No; it’s true because God created the world to thrive under his Law. Love of God and love of neighbor is the engine that keeps the world running as God intended. And as we read from the Westminster Confession of Faith last week, loving God and neighbor is the summary of the 10 Commandments, the Law.
It is only from this posture that we can strive to obey God’s Law while resting in his gospel. Romans 5.1 says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We can obey God’s Law because we have a peace with God that cannot be revoked. We have been adopted into God’s family through Christ. Our peace with God has nothing to do with whether we obey the Law or not; it is grounded completely and utterly in Christ. That means in order for God to no longer be at peace with any Christian God would have to reach back in time and pull Christ down off the cross; our peace is that secure.
And so we obey God’s Law not to merit God’s favor but because we have God’s favor. We obey not to earn God’s love but because we have God’s love. It’s the difference between coming home one night and your neighbor telling you while you were gone a representative from the IRS showed up and said that you still owed $20 on your taxes, and your neighbor said, “I paid it for you.” What would your response be? “Hey thanks, man. That was kind!”
Contrast that with the scenario of coming home and your neighbor telling you that the IRS showed up at your door saying you owed $100 million and you’re going to prison if you don’t pay and your neighbor saying, “I paid it for you.” What would your response be to that? You wouldn’t say, “hey, thanks, man!” No you would fall down on your knees and say, “command me.” I can never repay you but I will spend the rest of my life showing you how grateful I am for your grace.
That’s because the gospel moves us from guilt to grace to gratitude. That’s because grace is transformative; it changes us. When we understand how love and justice meet in the cross we can’t help but want to serve and obey in response. If that is not your response then you don’t understand the gospel. Obedience to God does not save you but if God has saved you, you will want to obey him.
Conclusion
Law without gospel brings death. That’s what Javert concluded. Near the end of Les Mis, the revolutionaries capture Javert intent on executing him. Jean Valjean volunteers to pull the trigger but he instead frees Javert, showing him grace. Javert then gains the upper hand and finally captures Valjean for himself.
Valjean requests that he have a chance to say goodbye to his adopted daughter and while he’s doing so Javert is torn. Javert fells like he can’t turn Valjean in because Valjean showed him grace but he also can’t alleviate the burden of the law, which Valjean broke. Javert can’t live with both realities and commits suicide by jumping off a bridge. Javert could not reconcile law and grace, but that’s exactly what happened in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived without sin, keeping the law perfectly. And then on the cross Jesus offered his righteous life to God in the place of his people and God’s justice was satisfied.
And so those opening lyrics to Les Mis are wrong in every way. We have done wrong. We are guilty. But sweet Jesus does hear our prayer and he does care because it is on the cross where law and gospel meet and there the miserable ones can be saved.