If the Law was Perfect, The Spirit is Beyond Perfect
Romans 7:1–6
Romans Lesson #075
September 27, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org

Open your Bible to Romans chapter 7. We’ll continue our study of how the believer is dead to the Law but first a couple of announcements. One is to give you a little update on my dad. Not much has changed. Just little glitches here and there show up. He is still in the VA Hospital and still waiting on alternative places to send him. Because he’s under VA care, my options are limited to places, nursing homes and medical foster homes that are contracted with the VA. That will involve places to go look at and will probably involve a lot of time. Fortunately, as I mentioned last week, I have good health. He is comfortable and not in pain and doing well. He continues to surprise them. One day they think he’s going to die in 36 hours, because they don’t know him, and when he gets a little more rest, he springs back.

We are, as human beings, incredibly tenacious about hanging to life. That’s how God made us. It takes a lot longer for us to go. It’s all in God’s hands. So I’m very comfortable with that. There are things that I learn as I go through that; that when we minister to people I’m always thinking about 2 Corinthians 1 when the apostle Paul talks about how we comfort others with the comfort which we’ve been comforted. So there’s an important learning process we all go through which helps us as we encourage, comfort, and minister to one another in the body of Christ.

One of the things I have noticed before but it’s always a little different when you go through it yourself, is that as we deal with people who are strong believers and they are facing loss in their life, they go through it in different ways. It may be loss of parents, loss of spouse, loss of children and that loss impacts their life in different ways so they go through their grief. Strong believers understand that when this person dies, they’re absent from the body and face to face with the Lord, especially when you’re looking at an older person such as a parent who has lived a good life and is a solid believer. It’s hard to watch them suffer because you don’t like that but you know that they need to go ahead and be with the Lord, but there’s a reason why they’re there even though you don’t understand it. There’s a reason why God leaves them there to teach others things.

It’s not the fact, as it is with unbelievers, that someone is dying; it’s the fact that all of the collateral issues in life, the legal issues, the hospital hassle, and all of the other stuff that comes along, is distracting. It often seems overwhelming because you just don’t know what it is. Even in my own thinking I find that it’s not that I’m worried. There are levels of uncertainty. You trust the Lord but it’s a matter of all this extra stuff that needs to be done.

So often I think about our Lord as He went to the Cross. He was under such emotional pressure in the Garden of Gethsemane that He sweated blood. The pressure was there. He felt it. There’s nothing wrong with those feelings. Sometimes we get the feeling that if we’re really trusting God we’re going to just be peaceful and have joy and we’re not going to feel the overwhelming reality of the circumstances. We think it’s not going to get heavy and maybe even oppressive. I didn’t say depressive; I said oppressive because it’s serious; there’s a lot that’s there. Our Lord never sinned even when He felt that pressure and that should comfort us.

You don’t deny the loss; you don’t deny all the pressure and everything else that may go with it at different times when it weighs on you. That’s not a failure to trust. It’s the reality of the circumstances. I hope that encourages some people as we all face these things. It’s not a problem to feel the weight of the circumstances; our Lord certainly did. The problem is when we let that move us into areas of carnality. It’s how we respond to that that’s important. It’s not that we have those feelings or those emotions.

The other thing I wanted to update you on was this little nasty thing that made the front pages last week about this scrap of a fragment of an alleged gnostic gospel. It was allegedly the scrap of a 4^th century gnostic gospel. From my readings in the past week a couple of things have come out. There’s a lot of doubt whether it is indeed legitimate. This evening when I was trying to find Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech on TV, I happened to catch an item in the scroll going across the bottom that the Vatican had come out with a paper claiming that this was a fake. So they’ve looked at it; they think it’s a fake.

Another aspect of this is that it seems to be a line copied out of part of a gospel of Thomas. The line that’s in there that alludes to a wife for Jesus is a really an obscure line but that kind of language is often used as the Church is the Bride of Christ. You find that in some of the orthodox literature at the time just because of that phraseology. The wife of Christ could be translated to mean the Bride of Christ. Anyway, it’s written in Coptic and it’s bad Coptic. Scholars I’ve read about have dismissed it as a complete fake or fraud. Now they haven’t had the time yet to do the test on the ink and parchment it’s written on and things of that nature. In terms of just the superficial evidence, it seems like this is a fake. So I just thought I would update you on that. You don’t have to lose any sleep over that in the coming weeks.

We’re getting into some great material in Romans chapter 7. I was talking to Dan Inghram on my way to class tonight. We were just going over some things and I was telling him a little bit about the conference next week about dispensations. I’m on this panel next week to say some things about how dispensational theology impacts how and what I teach from the pulpit. I was just reflecting on this as I was studying today.

In Romans 7, I wonder how someone can work their way through Romans 6–8 without at least a rudimentary dispensational framework. What we understand going back to Romans 6 is that Paul lays the groundwork for talking about sanctification with the Baptism by the Spirit. When we reflect back what we’ve gone through as a congregation in the last three years as we’ve studied Colossians, Romans, and Acts, we saw the same type of argument in Colossians, chapter 2 starting in about verse 5 or 6 where Paul lays the groundwork for the Baptism by the Holy Spirit and continued to use that kind of language through the core section of Colossians.

At the same time we’re in Acts where we have issues related to covenants; we’ve dealt with issues related to the New Covenant, the whole message of the Kingdom and repentance and how these things have all come together. As a pastor, as I’ve been studying this, it comes together and things get clarified in my thinking. It’s not that I didn’t understand something; it’s just that it comes into brighter light and it comes together as Scripture is compared to Scripture and more light is shed on these passages.

Romans 7 is one of those particular issues, especially in the first part, such as Romans 7:6. Just to direct your attention to the end of this opening introductory hinge paragraph, as I pointed out last time. Paul says, “But now we have been delivered from the Law, having died to what we were held by ...” So we were held by the Law. The Law’s not dead but we are dead to it now. He goes on to say “... for the purpose that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit.” Notice here he mentions the Spirit for the first time in these 3 chapters and it’s a contrast with the Law. Now that’s very important to understand ... that the Law is contrasted with the Holy Spirit. And then he says, “... that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter [of the Law].”

Now that terminology to refer to the letter of the Law is really developed in 2 Corinthians 3 where he talks about the “Spirit gives life but the letter kills.” This is a really difficult passage that I’ve often had questions about but all of these are related. It all is important to understand because these passages address this issue that Christians have had such problems understanding down through the years. What is the role of the Mosaic Law in the Church Age? What is the purpose of the Mosaic Law in the Church Age?

Beyond that we even have problems understanding what was the role of the Mosaic Law in the Age of the Law. How many of us have been under the impression at one time or another that the observance of the Mosaic Law was a means to salvation in the Old Testament? Or a means to sanctification in the Old Testament? How well do we understand the concept of personal experiential growth in the Old Testament under the Dispensation of the Law when they didn’t have the Spirit? This whole concept of the Baptism by the Spirit being foundational to understanding the distinction between this dispensation and the previous dispensation becomes larger and larger in my thinking.

With no Baptism by the Spirit in the Old Testament, the sin nature isn’t dead. We don’t die to the sin nature. The old man isn’t crucified. We’re not delivered from the tyranny or dominion of the sin nature because there’s no Baptism by the Holy Spirit. That was really a new thought to me as I looked at it from that perspective, realizing that without the Holy Spirit, what’s the trajectory going to be in your spiritual life? It’s not going to be a whole lot of success.

As we go back rethinking the Old Testament in light of that, outside of a few key individuals in bright lights in the Old Testament, the history of Israel under the Law is a negative trajectory. They never get there. There are times when they are close but they are few and far between. The Law just can’t do it. It’s a huge negative lesson that morality just isn’t enough. Not only is it not enough, not only is it not going to elevate the culture for any length of time, morality, as we see, is probably going to just stimulate the sin nature. It’s going to just lead to greater regression, and that’s how the Law is described in this chapter. It’s through the Law that we know sin and the Law sort of aggravates the sin nature.

I know no one here has ever had this experience but every now and then when I’m driving along on a major thoroughfare and you’re approaching an intersection and the light turns yellow, you see people who are far from that light just suddenly put the pedal to the metal in order to beat that yellow light and usually its pretty orange, if not flaming red, when they go through the intersection. It’s something about the law that when it says don’t do this, it makes us want to do it.

I remember when I was a kid at the time they built the Flagship Hotel down at Galveston and they put up signs about not fishing out of the rooms. They didn’t want the weights coming back and breaking the windows. They didn’t really have a problem with people fishing out the windows until they put up the signs. “Don’t fish out the window. Hey, what a great idea. Is anyone looking? Let me try.” When the law says, “Don’t do something” it gives us ideas. We want to see if we can get away with it. It aggravates the sin nature.

That’s what Paul is going to say in Romans 7. So the Law wasn’t the means to personal holiness in the sense of experiential righteousness. It’s a failure. Romans 7 is kind of a negative between 6 and 8. Six is all about what we have in Christ; eight is what the Holy Spirit provides, and seven is “you really can’t do it on your own by just trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps by the Law. It’s always going to lead to frustration and failure in the spiritual life. So it’s sort of a negative.

As I’ve been going through some things today, I’ve gotten excited. I’ve gone through and connected some dots with some other passages, which always helps us get a little further clarification of what the Scriptures teach. So I want to start where Paul is going to say some negative things about the Law in this chapter. He says some very positive things about the Law in this chapter, too. In verse 12, he says, “Therefore the Law is holy.” I want to start with the emphasis on that passage because it’s easy for us, in light of some of the negative things said in the New Testament about the Law, to walk away with the wrong impression and that somehow the Law was just not quite there.

But if we go back to the Old Testament, the testimony of the Scriptures in the Old Testament, again and again tell us that the Law is perfect. But if the Law is perfect, the Holy Spirit just goes beyond that infinitesimally. It’s beyond anything we can imagine. That’s what I mean by the title, “If the Law was perfect then the Spirit is beyond perfect.”

As I pointed out last time, and I’ve done a little more work on this chart (CHART) to bring the issues out. Romans 6 focuses on the fact that when we’re saved, we’re dead to sin. In Romans 7 we’re dead to the Law. It’s not that Law died but that we become dead to it. It breaks that authority.

That’s why he uses the illustration for marriage in verses 2 and 3. All he’s saying there is that we recognize that when two people are bound together by the law and there’s a death of one that legal binding is broken. That’s all he’s saying in that illustration. The analogy he draws from that comes out in verse 4 where he says, “Wherefore my brethren, you also have become dead to the Law.” That conclusion tells us that the purpose of the illustration is just to make the point that with our identification with Christ’s death there’s no longer a tie with the Law.

We looked at two issues defining Law and then the significance of the illustration and the word Law here is not a general sense of law, a universal principle such as Roman law or Greek law, but Law in Romans is all about the Mosaic Law. It is the focal point. This is talking about the Mosaic Law. Now what was the view of the Old Testament in terms of the Mosaic Law? I think this is so important for us to be reminded about and as I went over these verses in preparation, I realized these are some of the greatest verses and chapters in Scripture. If you don’t have them underlined in your Bible, you should underline them.

I want to go through some of these passages in the Old Testament talking about the value of the Law. It’s easy to remember that the key Psalms related to the Word of God are Psalm 19 and then Psalm 119. In Psalm 19 there are two parts to the Psalm. The first part talks about the nonverbal revelation of God as revealed in the Heavens. “The Heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.” Then in verse , the focus is on the verbal revelation of God. So we have general revelation, non-verbal revelation, and special revelation.

(CHART) Look at what David says. I’ve underlined the different terms that David uses to talk about the Law, the Torah, that God has revealed to Moses. He calls it the “Law of the Lord”. In verse 7 he calls it “the testimony of the Law”, in verse 8 “the statutes of the Lord”, the “commandments of the Lord”. Verse 9: “the fear of the Lord”, “the judgments of the Lord” and then there’s a conclusion in verse 10. He says regarding the Law that it is “perfect”, “sure”, “righteous”, “right”, “pure”, “clean” and “true and righteous”.

All of that is true about the Mosaic Law so we shouldn’t get a negative idea about the Law. It is spoken of in only the highest terms of value in the Old Testament. “It is more to be desired than gold, yea, much fine gold, sweeter also than the honeycomb.” There is nothing of greater value than the Law. Then we get into Psalm 119. We learn that in the Old Testament Dispensation the Law was the means of cleansing from sin. How is one cleansed from sin? By observing the Law: the ritual cleansing, as well as confession before God. Psalm 119:9 tells us “ how a young man can cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your Word.”

If you go through Psalm 119 there are some 176 verses. This is the longest chapter in the Bible and it is preceded by Psalm 117 which is the shortest. Psalm 119 is an acrostic which means the first word in each section starts with the next letter of the alphabet. There lots of different words here used for the Law: words, statutes, ordinances, ways, precepts, commandments, righteous judgments. They are all talking about the Law.

Then the other way in which we are cleansed is not just in taking heed and obeying the Word but in hiding it in our heart and memorizing it. “Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You.” It’s preventative care. It’s not just the word for cleansing but for staying in fellowship. Then we have other verses that talk about the study of the Law as the highest value, the greatest thing that a person can do. The psalmist says, “I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches.”

How much time we spend pursuing wealth, pursuing money, pursuing security, the things that money can buy, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but here the psalmist is saying he values the Word as much as all that, if not more. He says, “I will meditate on Your precepts and contemplate Your way.” He only gets that from the Word. “I will delight myself in Your statutes.” Now how many times have you read through Deuteronomy and thought, “I’m just delighted to read this”? Attitude check. Verse 17, “Deal bountifully with Your servant that I may live and keep Your Word.” He sees the Law as a path to life. Psalm 119:18 “Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your Law.”

There is such a sense of excitement here to know the Word. I know many of you can remember back to a time, not that you’re bored with it now or you wouldn’t be here, but you remember a time when you were so excited. Most of us were that way when we were young. I think that’s typical of when we first began our growth as Christians because it’s all new, and we have a lot of questions we want answered. So we’re very excited about it. I believe that as we get older our motivation changes and it’s at that motivation shift that people fall out. You start off wanting answers to questions like most young people have. Why am I here? How do I know it’s true? How can I solve these problems in my life? We seem to have so many problems when we’re 20- 30 years old: problems such as “who am I going to marry?”, “why did I marry this person?” to “how am I going to deal with these babies who keep me up all night and then I have to work 14 hours?”

All these things are coming along and hitting us with the details of life and yet, we want answers. We want to be able to solve problems in life but somewhere after 15-20 years in the Word, we get most of those questions answered and there’s some maturity there. The issue isn’t coming so much to learn new things to satisfy the questions but that I need to be reminded every day of God’s faithfulness, of the importance of His Word, of His provision for me so that I can stay the course. I can’t just fall away. I’m not motivated because I’m trying to learn new things, though I will, but I’m motivated because I need to be reminded of the many things I’ve already learned, that God is faithful.

It doesn’t take more than about 12 hours to forget that God is faithful. Then I forget the promises and try to handle all the issues in life on my own instead of depending upon the Lord. The Psalmist goes on to say that it’s the Law that is the means of dealing with the hostile world. In Psalm 119:23, he says, “Princes also sit and speak against me.” This is David writing, most likely, and he’s talking about princes who speak against him. He’s talking about rulers, maybe within his own kingdom, conspiracies of all kind against him. He goes on to say, “But Your servant meditates on Your statutes.”

How do you handle the pressure of people problems, attacks, slanders, all of these things whether its coming from friends, co-workers, people you thought were your friends, family members. How do you handle when you live in a country where the leadership is all going in the wrong direction? Every now and then I hear people on the left or on the right, say, “If so and so gets elected I will move.” I don’t know where I would move to because the things that are coming to the U.S. that I don’t like are in place everywhere else. We’re just trying to be like the rest of the world.

People in the U.S. have forgotten that what made us great is that we weren’t like anybody else. What’s going to destroy us is when we become just another copy of the same old basic socialism that everybody else has. We are distinct and what keeps us focused when everything going on around us is chaos is the Word. Psalm 119:28 says, “My soul melts from heaviness.” I spoke about this earlier tonight. We go through times when the pressure is very real and we feel it and there’s nothing wrong with feeling it. David says “My soul melts from heaviness. Strengthen me according to Thy Word.”

In verse 92, David talks about if he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the Word, he wouldn’t have been able to handle all he’s handled. “Unless Your Law had been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” It’s the study of the Word that is the source of good judgment and knowledge. If we want to make wise decisions, then we need to immerse ourselves in the Word. “Teach me good judgment for I believe Your commandments.” “The Law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver.” It illuminates our path, our life, “Thy Word is a light unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” This is the Law.

How can we think negatively about the Mosaic Law? This is the Torah. How can we think negatively when the Old Testament under Divine inspiration extols the Law as such value. Look at some other passages: Deuteronomy 6:1–9. I’m not going to read through all those verses but it talks about the commandments, the statutes, the judgments and that the Lord has commanded Moses to teach the people that they may observe them when they come into the Land. Why? So they can fear the Lord and their days may be long, (verse 2) and that it may be well with them and that they may multiply greatly. If you want to have genuine prosperity, success, and a rich, full life, it comes from knowing the Law and being obedient to the Law.

So what do you have to do? It has to be with you everywhere you go; when you stand up, sit down, lie down, drive, work, walk, watch TV, when you go out to eat, everywhere. That’s what you see in the famous passage in Deuteronomy 6:4–6, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One. You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk in your way and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, on your eyes, etc.”

Is the Word of God that real to you? This is just talking about the Law and if the Law was perfect, as I pointed out at the beginning, the Spirit is even better. The Holy Spirit is more perfect, more better. Isaiah 42:21, “The Lord is well pleased. For His righteousness’ sake He will exalt the Law and make it honorable.” And then almost the last verse in the Old Testament, Malachi 4:4, “Remember the Law of Moses which I commanded you in Horeb for all Israel with its statutes and judgments.”

The value of the Law could not be stressed more in the Old Testament. That is why it is so valued by the Jews when Jesus comes. What’s the problem? The problem is that they misunderstood the purpose. It’s not that they valued something they shouldn’t value; it’s that they valued it for the wrong reason. They thought that the Law was the path to righteousness before God. That by observing the Law, they could acquire the same righteousness that only God could give.

In the New Testament, we find that the people value the Law and respect it. In Matthew 5:17 and 19, Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For surely I say to you that until heaven and earth pass away not one jot or tittle will by no means pass away until all is fulfilled.” That’s the high value that Jesus placed on the Law but not the Pharisaical interpretation of the Law. That was what was wrong.

A very interesting passage takes place in Acts 21. This is when Paul is returning to Jerusalem. He’s going to take a vow and there’s nothing wrong with him going to Jerusalem and observing these days because he’s not doing it to gain righteousness. I think that is something that has been difficult for people to comprehend in the past but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Look at this first. “On the following day, Paul went in to us to James and all the elders were present.” This is a power meeting between Paul and James, the half-brother of Christ, who is the leader of the church in Jerusalem and all the leaders in the churches in Jerusalem. When he greeted them he “detailed those things which God had done through his ministry and that all that God had done to the Gentiles.” So he gives them an after-action report of his previous missionary journeys. And when they heard it, “they glorified the Lord.” There’s no indication that anybody is off-base or focused on the wrong thing.

They glorified God because of what He has accomplished through Paul and they say to him, “You see brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed.” These Jews have trusted in Christ and believed and they are zealous for the Law. They’re not trying to use the Law the wrong way which is what the Pharisees did but they still have a passion for the Law. Only about half of the New Testament is written at this time. The only thing these believers have at this time as the Word of God is the Old Testament and they value it. They’re still observing it. They’re in that transition zone. The Temple is still there and as far as Jews are concerned, whether they’re believers or not, there is still a responsibility to the Mosaic Law to fulfill those ritual commands.

It would mean how you understood it made a difference. If you were a Christian versus a Jew who had not understood it correctly and were trying to gain righteousness through the ritual. In just a few verses after this as Paul goes out and the crowd reacts to him, they cry out to him. They are misrepresenting his view of the Law. There’s no correction from Paul after verse 20 when he says, “Look, there are thousands of Jews who have believed and they still observe the Law.” Paul doesn’t say, “They’re all screwed up, they’re wrong, they’re a bunch of Judaizers.” There’s no correction there. There’s no hint in the text that they have a wrong attitude.

What happens after this is that Paul goes out and all of a sudden rumors go our through the crowd that Paul was there, then they start crying out and they misrepresent his view of the Law. He’s still respectful of the Law. That’s why he’s there. They say, “Men of Israel help, this is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, against the law, and against this place and furthermore he also brought Greeks into the Temple and has defiled this holy place.” This is just all a lie. Lying didn’t start in the last twenty years in politics or in religion. It’s been around for a very long, long time. All the way back to Cain, there’s been lying. They’re lying for their own cause and their own agenda. It’s not true at all. He’s not against the Temple. Has he said anything against the Temple? He’s not against the Law at all. You have to understand it right.

This was the same charge that they brought against Stephen. Remember in Acts 6:13? “They also set up false witnesses to accuse Stephen saying this man seeks to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, the Law.” But Stephen did not speak blasphemous words or anything like that against the Law or against the Temple. In Acts 18:13, when Paul was on his second missionary journey and went to Corinth he followed his normal standard operation procedure. He went to the synagogue first, and then after that when he would usually get kicked out, he would gain a hearing from a certain segment of the Jewish population who would respond to the Gospel message and believe Jesus was the Messiah.

They created such an uproar in Corinth that the Jews in the synagogue tried to bring charges against him in court and they took him before Gallio, the pro-consul of Achaia, and brought these charges. Their charge was that this fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the Law. What we’re going to see is that Paul has a high view of the Law. He just doesn’t have the Pharisaical view of the Law. He doesn’t look at the Law as a means of righteousness.

Before he believed that Jesus was the Messiah, before he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, he did believe that the Law was a means to righteousness. That’s what he says in Philippians, chapter 3, that he was a seeker of righteousness from the Law. That’s what was wrong. It wasn’t that the Law wasn’t valuable, wasn’t important, wasn’t perfect. As I said in the title, the law is perfect but the Spirit is better, more perfect, beyond perfect.

Now part of this was because there was this misunderstanding in terms of the role and the purpose and the function of the Law under Second Party Judaism, as the Pharisaical party developed after the return to the Land in an attempt initially to protect the people from violating the Law as they did before the Fifth Cycle of discipline hit them in 586 B.C. They had good intentions, as my mother used to tell me the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It never gets you to where you’re going: it always diverts you.

The role of the Law was good. It was holy, perfect, and righteous, as Paul says. But it’s purpose was first of all, Romans 3:20, “For through the Law, comes the knowledge of sin.” The Law’s purpose wasn’t to give us a path to righteousness but to expose our incredible need for righteousness; that there is none righteous, no not one. Not one person can live up to the standard of the Law. Romans 5:20, “The Law came in that the transgression might increase.” The more “thou shalt nots” there are, the more we want to see if we can get away with it when no one’s looking.

But that doesn’t mean the Law isn’t good. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:8, “For we know that the Law is good if one uses it lawfully, [according to its purpose].” In Romans 1, Paul says, “Do you not know brethren...” speaking to the Roman Christians, a large segment of which were converted Jews who had trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior, “for I speak to those who know the Law...” He’s speaking here to Jewish background Christians making sure they know the limitations of the Mosaic Law. “...that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives.” Romans 7: 2-6 shows that when death occurs the Law no longer has dominion.

But before we get into that, I want to divert our focus a little bit to this whole question of what is the role and relationship of the Law and the Church Age believer. This will take us to about six passages, a couple of which we can hit fairly quickly but we won’t get through all six of them this evening. At least we can get started and wrap this next week.

The first is a passage we will get to this year in Acts, chapter 16. I’m pretty sure we will because there’s a lot of redundancy in the Cornelius episode so that won’t take months to get through those three chapters. It’s amazing how much there is in Acts 3–12. All these things happen to Peter and then Peter comes to Cornelius and rehearses for him everything we’ve already heard so it’s repeated a second time. Then when Peter gets back to Jerusalem, he tells the whole story a third time. The Holy Spirit wants us to read it three times to make sure we get the point. As we teach our way through it, we don’t need to have quite that level of repetition.

In Acts 15: 1-29, there is another high level meeting that occurs with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, usually referred to as the Jerusalem Council. Now in the Jerusalem Council, the question is now that Paul has gone out into the Gentile countries and has had such a tremendous response from the Gentiles in terms of their response to the Gospel, the question is: what are we going to do with all these uncircumcised Gentiles? What’s their relationship to the Law of Moses to be? Do they have to obey the Law?

This forms the background for the second passage we’re going to in Galatians 3. Paul is going to be plagued by a group of Jews who follow him and antagonize him and stir up the Jewish population against him as he teaches because they’re claiming he is against the Law, that he is against their interpretation of the Law, that one can be righteous by means of the Law. So the Jerusalem Council there has to answer this question.

We’re told that the apostles and elders come together to consider the matter and they each have their say. Then Peter stands up and talks to them, and again, he goes back to the Acts 10 and 11 episode with Cornelius and talks about how God opened the door to the Gentiles through him. In verses 8 and 9 he says, “God, who knows the heart, gave the Holy Spirit to them just as He did to us.” Notice it’s a foundation there. It’s the Baptism by the Holy Spirit that brings us all into the body of Christ. That’s the foundation for Biblical Christian living for New Testament sanctification and spiritual growth, that act of the Holy Spirit. “..making no distinction between us and them.”

You can hear Paul in the background saying, “... neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, for we are one in Jesus Christ.” That’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So Peter says, “Why do you want to put the Law on the Gentiles?’ That’s a great verse, verse 10, when he says, “Therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” Think about that a minute. Peter is saying that the Law, which is good and perfect and holy, and more to be desired than anything in life, was a yoke, which “we” couldn’t bear.

What he’s saying is that it put us under a bondage because we couldn’t achieve it; we couldn’t fully, completely obey the Law and that it ended up destroying us. Now he doesn’t say it quite like that but that’s the perspective I’m picking up by looking at some of these other passages: that without the Holy Spirit, without the Baptism by the Holy Spirit, without the death of the tyranny of the sin nature, the Old Testament believer was really doomed to failure. There’s no way that on the basis of the Law or morality, they could ever overcome the sin nature.

What happens in each dispensation: God in His administration in certain periods of history gives certain assets to humanity. There’s a different set of assets in each dispensation so that when all of history is said and done, we’re going to look back and see that every variable was covered and under no variable was man able to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and solve his own spiritual problems apart from God. Apart from God, there’s just failure, man can’t do it on his own and even under perfect environment, with a perfect political system, and a perfect king, because man is flawed by the sin nature, there will be a massive rebellion against Jesus Christ at the end of the Millennial Kingdom and God will have to destroy the rebels by fire from heaven.

The problem isn’t education; it’s not the economy; it’s not the Democrats; it’s not the Republicans; it’s not the Iranians; it’s not the Russians; it’s not the Czech’s. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We’re the problem. It’s the sin nature in every human being and every volition that’s the problem. But God sets up every type: little provision from God to maximum provision from God and under every option, man fails.

Now there are greater failures and lesser failures. There are people who rise to great heights as spiritual heroes in some periods of history than at other times in history. But what Peter is saying here is that the Law was a yoke on the neck of the Israelites. They couldn’t achieve perfection; they weren’t able to bear it; they were destined for failure so why would they repeat a failure option. They had something better in this dispensation. That becomes the thrust of what he says.

Emphasis shifts in verse 11 to grace. So after all the discussion, after Peter talks, after Paul and Barnabas talk, after James talks, they come back and they come to a conclusion in verses 19 and 20. Their conclusion is, “Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.” In other words, things that would be genuinely offensive to the Jewish sensibilities among them. This is bringing in the law of the weaker brother before it’s spelled out by Paul.

So the Jerusalem Council decree is written out and in verses 24–29. It’s spelled out and they say in conclusion, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit to lay upon you no greater burden, i.e., the Law, than these necessary things that you refrain from things offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood. If you keep yourself from these things, you do well.” The conclusion of the Jerusalem Council is a conclusion based on grace, and not based on Law.

So the Law by Acts 15 is clearly seen not to be related to either salvation or sanctification. Their understanding is that the Law has been replaced by the Holy Spirit and by grace. Not that there wasn’t grace in the Old Testament and not that there aren’t mandates in the Church Age but that the Law represents a dispensational orientation to Israel and the Mosaic Law as all that there was. It was perfect but it wasn’t enough.

So a new dispensation came in with new aspects. Paul uses a different model in Galatians, chapter 3. This is a crucial chapter and it’s going to take more than 3 or 4 minutes to go through this. It’s very important to understand Galatians 3 because here Paul uses the analogy of a Roman or Jewish household where the child is treated as a child until he reaches a certain age. During the time of childhood, he’s treated as a child, talked to as a child, addressed as a child; he’s under the control of a pedagogue or a tutor but when he reaches maturity, which in a Jewish household is the age of 13 and he’s bar mitzvad and he becomes the son of the commandment.

At that point he becomes an adult. He’s to be addressed by his parents as an adult; certain kinds of discipline are no longer possible. That boy is now a man. And in a bar mitzvah ceremony, he will say, “I am now a man.” His voice usually cracks while he’s saying that because he’s going through puberty at that time. So that’s the analogy. The Law was treating the Jewish race as a child but with Christ coming, it’s the end of the Law, and that tutor dispensation is ended and now we’re adults, under freedom and responsibility, and grace.

We’ll start with the second point next time in terms of the Law and the Church Age believer in Galatians 3. Galatians is the first epistle that Paul wrote and I think Romans is the crystallization and expansion of everything Paul taught in Galatians. If you want to get a quick, easy orientation to Romans, you go through Galatians. All those basic themes are hit in the right order. We’ll come back and start here next Thursday night.