Now we know that the law [is] good if any one uses it lawfully,
Paul has just named teachers who wanted to teach the law without understanding it. Now he grants what no one disputes: the law is good — but good only when a person handles it lawfully, which raises the question of who the law was written for.
The law's goodness belongs to its own character, not to the results people get from it:
The law itself is "holy and just and good" (Rom. 7:12) whatever men may do with it. This verse says that when someone uses it lawfully, its practical effects are good. When people use it wrongly, as these law-teachers did, it does harm — though it stays perfectly good in itself.
The next verse gives the answer: God gave the law not for a righteous person but for the lawless. So using it rightly means turning it on sin. Wielding the sword and standing under it are worlds apart:
I hold that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully. It is useful to convict of sin, but it is not made for the righteous — at least so Scripture says. Using it to convict a sinner of sin is one thing. A Christian being under it is another. The difference is like holding a sword by the handle and running someone else through with it, compared with being run through yourself. The law is good, if one uses it lawfully; it is death and condemnation if he is under it.
Law of any kind has wrongdoers in view:
Law does not contemplate the good but the bad. Law is enacted to detect, convict, and punish. Law never made a just man, still less a good man. It is a sharp weapon to wound and kill lawbreakers. It was never designed to shape honest motives or a walk of true righteousness. Its excellence lies in sparing no evil; and man is evil, and that by nature.
If the law was given for sinners, then pressing it on people God has already justified turns it to the wrong target. That is exactly the mistake of the teachers Paul is correcting:
The law was not enacted for the righteous but for sinners. So to strongly enforce it upon those who were righteous, because justified by God Himself, was not a lawful use of it.
There is a second misuse, closer to home: taking the law up as evidence of one's own goodness. That reverses what the law is for, and it also asks the law for something it never carried:
Too many use it only to prop up their own self-righteousness. That use is completely false, for the law was not even given for a righteous man, but for the lawless, disobedient, ungodly, and sinners. It will expose and condemn sin without mercy, and it leaves the sinner — that is, everyone — under condemnation. It has no power whatever to forgive nor to justify, nor to take away the sin it exposes.
Since Paul calls the law good, it cannot be treated as cancelled. But good for what?
It is a very serious error to suppose the law is set aside. Far from it. The apostle in 1 Timothy declares, "the law is good, if one uses it lawfully." If the law were dead or set aside, it could not be called good for anything. What is dead is good for nothing. What then is the law good for? Not for justification, but for conviction — not as a rule of life, but as a rule of death.
Commentators differ here. Another writer warns that running the law down is itself a failure of the lawful use:
There is sometimes a mistaken effort to exalt the gospel by contrasting it with, and by implication belittling, the law. This is not "using the law lawfully." Even in its most legal and condemning passages, the law holds a foreshadowing of good things to come, by implication or prophecy.
If the law is not the believer's rule, something must take its place. Kelly points to Christ, the whole of Scripture, and the Spirit's help in applying it:
It is Christ Who above all acts by faith on the believer's soul. So he needs the word of God as a whole throughout his life, and the Spirit helps him to apply it in practical detail. This is the Christian's secret of true morality. In divine wisdom it ties the heart to the Saviour day by day. It makes the written word something to ponder constantly, for comfort and for careful application in the Spirit. But all of this is held in the sense of the true grace of God in which we stand.
The law is not the believer's rule, yet as Scripture it still teaches God's mind:
The law may also be used like all Scripture that teaches the mind of God. Ephesians 6 does this with obedience to parents: God thinks so much of it that it is the first commandment with a promise attached.
- Good — the law's goodness never changes, whatever people do with it. Only its effects change.
- Lawful — the lawful use is to convict of sin; holding the sword by the handle is not the same as being run through by it.
- Target — the law is written for the lawless. Press it on those God has justified, or use it to prop up your own goodness, and you aim it at the wrong person.
- Limit — it exposes and condemns sin, but has no power to forgive, justify, or remove what it exposes.
- Replacement — Christ, the whole word of God, and the Spirit shape the believer's walk. He stands in grace, not under law.
knowing this, that law has not its application to a righteous person, but to [the] lawless and insubordinate, to [the] impious and sinful, to [the] unholy and profane, to smiters of fathers and smiters of mothers; to murderers,
Some men wanted to be teachers of the law without understanding what they were saying. Paul does not attack the law. He says plainly who it is for — and that single point decides how a Christian relates to it.
The force of the verse rests on a legal term. One writer points out that the Greek word is the ordinary word for placing people under a statute:
It is not made for a righteous man, that is, for a Christian. "Law is not made" uses a technical word for those who are placed under it. English law applies to Englishmen, not to others; it cannot be applied to them. The only true translation is "law does not apply to" — it is not enacted for the righteous, and so it cannot direct God's people.
The "righteous" here is not a rare moral hero. He is the ordinary believer. The law has no claim on him because he already has a righteousness the law could never supply:
A believer with sincere faith and love out of a pure heart and a good conscience is righteous, and has nothing to do with the law. Possessing the righteousness which is apart from law, having the righteousness of God in Christ, the law has no power over the believer... The law was never designed to be the rule for the Christian's life. He is saved by grace, and that alone can produce godliness. It is grace which teaches him to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age, and also gives the power for it.
Law works by threat and penalty. So it targets the bad, not the good, and it can never produce the character it demands:
Law does not have the good in view but the bad. Law is enacted to detect, convict, and punish. Law never made a "just man," still less "the good" man... It is a sharp weapon to wound and kill transgressors; it was never designed to form motives of integrity or a walk of true righteousness. Its excellence lies in this: it does not spare evil; and man is evil, and this by nature. Grace, not law, saves sinners.
Yet the law still has a real place. It is not the full expression of what God is:
The use of the law is to condemn, to kill, to deal with evil. This never could be the full expression of God. It does keep up a witness to God's hatred of evil; those who are presumptuous it leaves without excuse.
Verse 8 called the law good when it is used lawfully. Here is that lawful use — pressing guilt home on people who do not feel it:
I take up Paul's words: "We know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully." A lawful use of it would be to bring its lash on the consciences of the ungodly. It would show them their sins, and how far they have fallen short of what it righteously requires... But some preach the law as a way to gain God's favour, and as the way of salvation and life. Such a man opposes the gospel. He slights God's great gift of His Son.
The list that follows is not random. Kelly reads the opening terms as deliberate pairs, moving from inward will to open violence:
Such are the pairs in this dark list of human depravity. First, the inner spring of self-will and its more open refusal to submit. Next, irreverence towards God, and evil towards man. Third, impiety and open profanity. Fourth, insolent violence towards parents, without going so far as killing. That last extreme opens the general group that follows, one name after another — murderers... and anything else that is against sound teaching.
Law is made for the lawless. So a believer who takes it as his own standard has changed sides. He steps back among the people it targets:
A Christian who takes up the law as the rule of his own life must first give up his place in Christ. He must abandon that righteousness of God which he is made in Him. The law was not enacted for the Christian. Of course no Christian deliberately intends such folly; but this is really what the error implies. The very principle of taking the law for himself gives up all his blessing in Christ — without knowing or intending it.
- Address. Law is legislation, and legislation names its subjects. This law names the lawless, not the righteous — just as English law applies to Englishmen and not to others.
- Purpose. Law exists to detect, convict, and punish. It is a sharp weapon against wrongdoers, never a tool for forming integrity.
- Person. The righteous man is the believer who already has the righteousness of God in Christ, so the law has no power over him.
- Proper use. Used lawfully, it lays its lash on the conscience of the ungodly; used as a way to earn God's favour, it opposes the gospel.
- Peril. Taking the law as your rule of life surrenders your place in Christ. Grace teaches godliness, and grace supplies the power for it.