Galatians 3

It's interesting to me how many people don't go back any further than the Ten Commandments when they think about the Old Testament. They act like that's where it all began and that that was the way to have a relationship with God. Even some try to carry that forward to now believing that you have to follow a set of rules in order to be a part of God's family and have a relationship with Him.

The fact of the matter is, God had a relationship with man long before the Ten Commandments. He created this entire world. He spoke to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, etc. all before the Law was anything that man knew anything about. So how did these men have relationships with God? How could they have been able to converse with God before they knew the "rules"? Obviously, the "rules" or the Law don't have much to do with a relationship with God.

Your relationship with God is based on faith. It always has been and it always will be. There is nothing more that you can do to enhance that. There is nothing that you can do to change that. God is not impressed by behavior or by attitude. He only wants your faith. The earliest believers in the Bible understood that and they walked in faith. The Law was not a concept that mattered because it couldn't improve their relationship with God at all.

So why was the Law even created? If it doesn't give you a relationship with God, and it can't give you life, then why have it? Why did God take the time to have the Jews write all of these rules out? Why did He take the effort to put the Ten Commandments on stone tablets? Why did He make such a big deal out of the rules if He really wanted faith? There are two reasons.

First, at the time that the Law was written the nation of Israel had just been born. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for some time and they had been under the rule of the Egyptians. They had their own beliefs but they weren't their own people. After they left Egypt, they became their own nation, and every nation must have laws. It's what holds the society together. So, there was a simply sociological reason for God providing the Law to the nation of Israel. The people need to know boundaries.

Second, humanity needed to understand their need for Christ. The Law instituted a system by which everyone had to die. It instituted a system by which only a select few could really know God, and it created a goal that could never be attained. We need someone to fulfill those Laws for us. Including the fact that atonement can only be granted through blood sacrifice. Jesus was that sacrifice.

Don't get confused now. The Law itself has never changed, and the fact that a relationship with God is built on faith has never changed. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are complementary. There is no value in Christ's sacrifice without it fulfilling the Law, and there is no need for the Law except to direct us back to faith.

So how does this apply to us? I was raised in the USA. I wasn't raised to follow the Law. I don't even know most of the rules. But we do, in our Christian culture, put up Laws of our own. We direct our church membership to do this and don't this and don't to that. We judge who is saved and who isn't by whether they drink or smoke. We have created our own system of Laws that weren't even laid down by God. We pull things out of the Law and say that these apply to us and we ignore others, as if we should be able to pick and choose which rules to follow. We don't have that choice, and we don't have that need. The Law is what it is, and we are not prisoner to it. Our relationship and redemption is based on faith alone.