What is the law of God according to the Bible?

This question may be very simply answered. The law reveals what man ought to do. This is what is written in the law. We often hear it said that “The law is the transcript of the mind of God.” This definition is altogether defective. What idea should we have of God were we to regard “the ten words” uttered on the top of Mount Sinai, mid thunderings and lightnings, blackness, darkness and tempest, as the transcript of His mind? How should we know God if “the ministration of death and condemnation, written and engraven in stones,” is the transcript of His mind? May we not, with great justice, inquire of the framers of the above most objectionable definition, “Is there nothing in the mind of God except death and condemnation? Is there nothing in the mind of God except thou shalt and thou shalt not? If there be more than these, then it is a mistake to affirm that “The law is the transcript of the mind of God.” If it be said that “The law declares the mind of God as to what man ought to do,” we have no objection to offer, for that is what we hold the law to be. But then, let the reader remember that the declaration of what man ought to do and the revelation of what God is, are two totally different things. The former is the law, the latter is the gospel. Both are perfect — divinely perfect — but they stand in vivid contrast; the one is perfect to condemn, the other is perfect to save.

3 The people, come out of Egypt, are led through the desert to be tried, and at last are brought to Sinai. And now a principle quite new is presented to them. The covenant of the law is offered to the people; that is to say, the blessing and the enjoyment of promises under condition of obedience to the law of God. "If ye obey my voice," said Jehovah to the people; "thou shalt be a peculiar treasure unto me." "Do this, and thou shalt live." This then is the principle of the law of God, a principle perfectly just, like the law, which was the rule of conduct which God proposed, and which the Lord Jesus summed up in those holy words: "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." It was a perfect and admirable rule of what man ought to be, and which would secure happiness to the creatures living according to its requirements. Jehovah therefore proclaimed the law, under the form of Ten Commandments, with His own mouth to the people, at Sinai. If they kept it, they should be blessed; if not, they would be condemned and cursed.

Now the law, as it ought, proposed to them a perfect obedience, even (what is in fact alone such) the perfect obedience of the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." It is evident that, if God was entering into relationship with man, He must look to the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." To act otherwise would be to justify the hypocrite. The law was thus given. It was a holy, just, and perfect law, which declared what man ought to be, in order to please God, and to have life eternal. If God was pure, holy, and just, man must be so to be happy. But mark here, if the law described what man ought to be, it did not at all declare what God was, except that He was just, and would punish the sinner. It is the gospel which shining, while it fully recognises this justice and the perfection of the law, reveals what God in grace is to him who transgresses it. We shall speak of it presently. Here let us follow our subject. The law, which required perfect righteousness and obedience in man, had been given - to whom? To man already a sinner? What can a perfect law do (and the law of God must be such) for a sinner? Condemn him in convincing him of his sin. Was it the law which was in fault? Quite the contrary: it was its holiness and righteousness which did thus. It was the necessary result of a perfect law given to a sinner. A rule gives neither life nor strength; it requires certain things, it gives nothing.

We find God acting according to two great principles - law and grace. Law is God requiring from man what man ought to be. It takes up all the relationships formed of God towards God and man. The duties were all there before the law was given, but it gave the rule of them, and attached God's express sanction to them. The law came and claimed from man obedience. Our Lord sums up the whole law in two sentences: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," etc.; and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The law came and claimed from man what he ought to be. It gave no life, no power, deliverance, or object to be a motive; it could not clear the guilty, nor was it any help or strength, although God does help His people at all times. But the law itself could do nothing but demand obedience; and as man was a sinner, and incapable of obedience to a holy law, it was a ministration of death and condemnation. There is no grace in law (the two are opposed to each other), but God's grace dealt with individuals. The law was a ministration of death and condemnation because it gave from God what man ought to be, and what man is not. If a man's heart is not exercised towards God, the law does not trouble him much. He thinks he has not done anything very bad; he is no worse than his neighbours; he has not committed any very gross sins. Besides, he says, God is merciful; for he is sure to bring in the thought of a little mercy to meet his need; for deep down in the heart of every man is the sense that he has sinned. He is pretty comfortable, and it is all very well as long as it is a question of natural conscience; not of God's eye reaching the heart and thoughts. When the law says, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," we are at once convinced of sin; we know that we do not. Who is as troubled at a loss to his neighbour as he would be at a loss to himself? But if we get a revelation of God ever so small along with the law, we are utterly condemned at once; for no flesh can stand His eye. Now one of two things will happen. You will either seek to hide from God, as Adam did in the garden of Eden, or you will seek to hide God from you, as Israel did when they entreated that Moses should put a veil upon his face: for if a man once gets but a sight of God, he can say with Job, "If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean; yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." Whatever I may have thought of myself before, I see that in God's eyes I am only like a man that is just dragged out of a ditch - utterly unclean. Under the law the soul may feel all right when it is not exercised towards God; but in His presence no man can stand it. Lust is there in the heart.

'Law' may be considered as a principle in contrast to 'grace,' in which sense it occurs in the N.T., the word 'law' being often without the article (though the law of Moses may at times be alluded to in the same way). In this sense it raises the question of what man is for God, and hence involves works. "The doers of [the] law shall be justified," Rom. 2:13; but if, on the other hand, salvation be "by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace." Rom. 11:6. The conclusion is that "by the deeds of [the] law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." None can be saved on that principle. In opposition to it "the righteousness of God without [the] law is manifested." The believer is "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Rom. 3:20-24. 'Law' a principle stands also in scripture in contrast to 'faith.' "The just shall live by faith: and the law is not of faith; but the man that doeth them shall live in them." Gal. 3:11.

3 Intimately connected with this government of God is the Law; it establishes the rule of good and evil according to God, and founds it upon His authority. The Lord furnishes us with the expression of it, in drawing from various parts of the Pentateuch principles, which, were they established and operative in the heart, would lead to obedience, and to the accomplishment of God's will, and would be productive of human righteousness. The Ten commandments do not create duty, the existence of which is founded on the relationships in which God has set man.

A formal rule was given when God brought a people to Himself. The law was given by Moses. It put man, externally redeemed (or the idea would have been impossible), into the place of obedience, on the ground of God's claiming the fulfilment by man of the duties of the relationship in which he stood with God and with his neighbour. It was not now one central head of a race in blessing and obedience, tested when in the enjoyment of blessing, but individuals responsible to God and called to act up to that responsibility, and to their duty towards neighbours, or equal companions in a like position, while sanctioning the natural relations in which God had originally placed man, and which He still maintained. As a hidden principle which grace could find there, there was the claim of love to God and our neighbour as ourselves, and an open positive series of commandments maintaining relationships, and positively forbidding the breaches of them to which sin, self-will, independence, and lust, with ignorant subjection to the devil, now disposed man. Except as the redemption of the people displayed goodness, there could be no claim of a conduct according to it. And even as to this, it was not the expression of a new nature in man (though that alone can fulfil it), but the claim of consistency with the relationship they were in as a matter of duty. Thou shalt love.

174 The law, then, supposing Israel's redemption by God, was founded as a system on the duties of the relationship of man as such with God: on Adam's duties modified by the coming in of sin and God's taking up a people for Himself; but taking them up as men on the earth. He could not have taken up the heathen as such — it is not here a question how Enoch, Job, and others may have lived to Him, but He could not have taken up the heathen as such, for man was an outcast judicially and alienated from God. But when He had taken up Israel and externally redeemed him, then came a rule of life. A rule of life, now we are fallen, belongs to a redeemed people; i.e., none other can have it dispensationally from God. It would be owning what He had cast out judicially already. But when He had taken up Israel, God placed him on the footing of his original relationship, of his duties as man, only modified by the fact of the entrance of sin and the knowledge of good and evil. It was not the expression of a nature communicated, but the claim of a relationship where duties were to be fulfilled, assuming lusts and independence and self-will. It was a perfect rule for man in the flesh. Sanctions accompanied — life if obeyed, a curse if disobeyed. It became a perfect expression of claim, relationship, and sin, but not of any nature communicated and displayed in goodness; for man to whom it was addressed had an evil one. In its highest aspects, it was what man ought to be with God and his neighbour, but what responsible man who now knew good and evil ought to be. In the day when God will judge the secrets of men's hearts, He will judge the heathen on their own ground. They that have sinned without law will perish without law, as they that have sinned under the law will be judged by it. The law then is the rule of life to man in the flesh, alive as a child of Adam; the expression, not of life in him, but of a claim upon him in that natural relationship with God. "I am the Lord thy God — thou shalt." There is no other for heathen if we suppose a rule, but they were not under it, and will be judged, as God has declared, on another ground.

The law had in itself no aspect of grace - this of course. Let me take law in its highest sense, as that which even concerns angels - unfallen, perfect beings - what does it teach? What God requires - what ought to be. "They do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word." And thus also the ten words were the distinct demand, on the part of God, of righteousness from man, of what man ought to be towards Him and before Him - "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." Nay, more; the law supposed sin - was adapted to those who had a tendency to sin; but the foundation and centre of aft our blessings, what God is towards man in love and grace, was never brought out at all. Thus law (properly so) utterly fails in bringing us to God.

In the second place, we find that God gave a certain requirement to man, that he should fulfil perfectly, so as to stand in the presence of God; and this requirement was the law. It requires just what it ought to require from man; and tells him exactly what he ought to be: that he should love God with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and that he should love his neighbour as himself. That he should not lust, etc. It gave him an exact and perfect rule to that conscience he had received when he had transgressed, and bore with him when he was driven out of the garden: the law came to him and found him a sinner, and nothing else. The law thus given to him would have been unintelligible to Adam in the garden before he fell; if it came to him there and said, "Thou shalt not lust," he would not have known what it meant: there was nothing to lust for, and no lust in his heart. It was a perfect standard, doubtless, and brought out definitely the lusts of a heart that had departed from God. It gave the true, just measure of what we ought to be, while we are not it; and "by law is knowledge of sin." And when it brings the knowledge of sin, it leads also to two discoveries. First, that I had not only done this and that, which it condemns, but, secondly, that there is a something within, an evil root, which led to the commission of such things. Why is it that we have committed sin? Tremendous discovery! Because we liked it! And the perfect standard of God's law brought to light the fact that we loved sin in its nature and practice! It became thus the ministration of death to us. Useful, most useful, in convicting of such things, and bringing death to the conscience, but it belongs to a child of Adam and to none else.

Law: the proclamation of the righteousness of a sovereign God; the people being yet unfallen. Typically, the obedience which grace enables for and makes necessary to the redeemed.

There are these two things; first, what God requires positively of man, expressed in the summary given by our Lord "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" and then, as the other part, the prohibition of what man was indulging in. The law presented the requirements of God, that is supposing man was right practically before God, and took cognizance of what man was not, and prohibited it. And that is all the law did; except indeed to pronounce the curse, if there were failure in the things required.