God's Kindness through the Law
Several years ago, I coached my daughter’s middle school girls basketball team. I loved the challenge. They were true beginners, but they worked hard and improved. They were learning the rules, fundamentals, and how to play as a team. Fundamentals are laws that help players become successful on the court. The better a player is at the fundamentals, the better he or she is at the game of basketball.
When novices begin learning the great game of basketball, they usually display bad form when dribbling, passing, and shooting. The fundamentals are not always instinctual nor are they easy to master. Beginners naturally break the fundamentals of basketball and must learn what they’re doing wrong and how to correct it. They might dribble with two hands on the ball (double dribbling). They might lob a pass way up into the air (easy to steal). They might shoot the basketball like they throw a baseball (inaccurate). Beginners often look awkward as they learn, but as they progress in the fundamentals little by little, their ability to dribble, pass, and shoot develops, the game becomes more competitive and more fun for them, and they look less awkward. Players who continue with bad form, whether they are clumsy and nonathletic or simply refuse to put in the time, never become good basketball players. The greatest basketball players endeavor to master the fundamentals and continue to develop their technique because they want to excel and bad habits form easily.
Is it kind and helpful, even loving, when coaches point out the improper form or bad habits of their players? Would it help the players if the coach tossed out the laws of good basketball and tolerated, even encouraged, unacceptable dribbling, passing, and shooting? How would those players perform in games? My hunch is they’d leave the court embarrassed. As uncomfortable as a coach’s correction may be, the best coaches love their players by informing them of their weaknesses and helping them correct them by careful and repetitive practice of the fundamentals.
Wouldn’t it be supremely kind, helpful, and loving if God, who knows what human life is all about, pointed out our lawlessness? Since lawlessness warrants the condemnation of God, warrants death, the silence of God would culminate with the just condemnation and death of all the lawless. Imagine perishing in your sin and guilt without any knowledge of sin. But God has used the law to bring knowledge of sin and guilt. God’s law exposes our great need of salvation.
Human beings are born spiritual anarchists, born with a predisposition to rebel against God and His law. This means all humans have a predisposition to live in a way that destroys them. So, when God, by His marvelous grace and kindness, reveals the law to expose lawlessness in sinners and their need of His Son, it is His kindness, compassion, and love. To be aware of lawlessness, of our sin and misery, is the first step toward glorious redemption in Christ, and God begins this process of redemption by awakening His people to their utter moral failure under the law. This is not cruelty; this is love.
Many people think God’s law represses their freedom, deprives them of something good, and leads them to a joyless life. They perceive God’s justice and law as ruthlessness, malice, etc. instead of love. They misconstrue God’s good law and its purposes because they do not know or trust God or His transcendent and gracious ways.
Consider Heidelberg Catechism three for a moment. It asks, “From where do you know your sins and misery?” It answers: “From the law of God.” Now, why would anyone want to know their sins and misery? Sounds unpleasant! It is unpleasant, but it is also good, for the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). To be aware of sin and misery is a great gift because it alerts us to our unrighteousness and need of God’s grace in Christ. Apart from awareness of sin and misery, there is no awareness of the need for Christ nor can there be a desire for Christ. Ignorance of the law can feel alright, but it doesn’t end alright! It is a great kindness for God to alert sinners of their spiritual poverty and need of the riches of His grace. Only then do they begin to see the goodness of His grace and law.
The law is how God alerts us to our sin and misery and awakens us to our need of Jesus Christ and the goodness of His grace and law. The law, therefore, understood by the Spirit’s work of grace, is a tremendous kindness. Three times the songwriter of Psalm 119 said, “I love your law.” He understood what we often forget – the law of God is good, is something to be cherished. Paul said, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12).
Paul wrote in Romans 3:20, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” The law is good but not because it can save us. The law has no power to save. The law is different from the gospel. But the law is good because it gives us knowledge of sin, knowledge we would not have without it.
God’s law, then, is an expression of God’s love, because through it, God informs us of His righteousness, our unrighteousness, and our desperate need of Christ’s righteousness. The law is good, at least because it prepares us for the gospel. Paul added in Romans 7:7, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” Aren’t those words infused with thankfulness. In one sense, isn’t Paul saying, “I am so grateful for the law because it told me how I’m sinning against God and how much I need God’s grace in Christ”?
God is our loving Father (1 Jn. 3:1), and when our loving Father points out our moral failures with His law, He is being kind to us. He is loving us. See, as God uses the law to uncover our sin, He also gives us the gospel of His crucified and risen Son. As we believe the gospel, the law, the same law which points out our sin, does more for us. By the grace of God, the law becomes our loving heavenly Father’s instruction in how to love Him, how to live a life pleasing to Him, how to live a truly good life. Despite continuing to alert believers to their sin problem, the law no longer condemns believers because of their union with Christ, and it does more for them; it defines the kind of person the Holy Spirit is sanctifying them to be, the kind of person Jesus is completely and perfectly.
Heed the words of Solomon, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11–12).
Quotes from the Heidelberg Catechism are taken from Zacharias Ursinus & Jonathan Shirk, The Heidelberg Catechism (Manheim: Small Town Theologian, 2024).
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one-half of any book of the ESV Bible.
