Ah technicalities. Where do we normally see technicalities come into play? Wherever life involves any kind of laws: legal agreements, state laws, federal laws, traffic laws, tax laws, dress codes, home owner’s covenants, etc.
You hear horrible things like a criminal getting off because their Miranda rights weren’t read, an old lady losing her home because she was a day late with a payment, or a person being wrongly convicted or acquitted because crucial evidence wasn’t allowed. You hear judges say, “I know this is wrong but I have to follow the letter of the law”. You just don’t hear things like this in the regular day-to-day world.
I’ve signed several mortgages in my life for new homes and refinancing. It always amazes me how many forms need to be signed or initialed. The other thing that amazes me is how the closing officer summarizes each legal-length page with one or two sentences. “This just says if you don’t pay the mortgage the bank will take ownership of the home.” (oh how nice!) How is that possible, and why can’t the page be written with just the couple of sentences the closer says?
I’m writing this in order to demonstrate how we as humans are incapable of being like God knowing good and evil. Obviously God knows best. His warning to Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not arbitrary; instead, he knew what he had created in mankind and he knows our capabilities and our limitations and what is best for us. Why are we incapable of knowing good and evil? Perhaps the better question is why are we unable to live and relate to God by our good actions? I believe this is best understood by looking at how we govern ourselves through the laws we make as a society.
This is where technicalities come into play. It’s because the laws (and legal documents–whenever I use the word “law” here, I mean any kind of legal situation) seek to codify the good and the bad or the allowed and the disallowed. In other words, they try to express in unequivocal, unambiguous words what can be done and what cannot be done. The words themselves are not the good and the bad, but are our best attempt to capture the concepts of good and bad in language. In doing so, they seek leave no gray areas–no room for what we often call “heart” or “common sense”. By “heart” we typically mean exceptions because of unfortunate or unexpected situations. And by “common sense” we mean things that should not need to be stated due to their obvious nature.
Why can’t our legal writings include room for exceptions or common sense? Because simply put, there are too many possibilities for exceptions and not everyone agrees on what common sense is. Any legal writings that try to leave wiggle room become weak and unenforceable.
Aren’t judges supposed to read a law and decide whether an exception should be made? They’re not supposed to. All they’re supposed to do is interpret the law. That is, they are meant to read the words of the various clauses of the law and determine what they mean. Beyond that, the law is out of their hands.
God is the ultimate judge. Unlike our judges and attorneys, he knows exactly what happened and precisely what is good and evil. He also knows our heart and our motivations and any special conditions–even conditions in our genetics and upbringing. With this perfect knowledge, he can know exactly what justice, grace, mercy, etc. need to be applied.
Therefore our laws are limited because they must use language to express good and bad and can’t enumerate all the possible exceptions that might affect it. Our law enforcement, judges and courts are limited because they can only work within the law and only know a small fraction of all information and may in fact have misinformation. This also assumes no corruption or bias In the system (which is almost never the case).
I’m not saying we should do away with our legal system. No, it does the best it can and offers some justice. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate why we should not try to relate to God through obedience to laws.
As I mentioned above, God is the perfect judge. Therefore he does not have the problems our law enforcement and court system has. He has all of the information there is and will never be corrupt or biased. What is the problem then? It’s other half of the arrangement, namely, we are not equipped to know good and bad and be good all the time. Even though God did give us consciences and we do come equipped to understand some of the good and the bad, what we don’t understand God did his best to communicate through the Law of Moses. Even though God is perfect, since language is inherently limited, the Law is only partial. It did its best to encompass at least part of good and evil; but just like our law system, it falls short. For instance, Paul does his best to enumerate the acts of the sinful nature in Gal 5:19-21. At the end, however, he simply says “and the like”, basically saying, “you get the picture”. At the end of Paul’s list in Rom 1:29-30, he ends with “they invent new ways of doing evil”, basically saying, “mankind will always find new ways of doing evil so there’s no way to have a complete list”.
However, what God did give us in the Law of Moses is easily comprehended by the average person, so the problem isn’t comprehension. As Moses says in Deut 30:11-14:
Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
I don’t believe God is saying in this passage that we have the ability to obey all the commands he gave; but if you read carefully, you’ll see he’s saying we do have the capacity to memorize and understand the laws.
Paul in Rom 10:6-8 quotes Deut 30:11-14. Here I believe Paul is saying that the Gospel, which is the righteousness that comes by faith, is not only comprehensible but also attainable by us because God has given us the ability to have faith. Therefore we are not equipped to know good and evil and follow laws, but we are equipped to have faith in God and his promises.
Some might ask, “Who are you arguing with? I agree with you and don’t want to follow laws in order to relate to God.” Good, but Satan is the father of lies and is very crafty. Read John 8:44 for instance. I think we read the conversation that Satan had with Adam and Eve and think, “Hmm, I can easily see where he’s going, I’ll not fall for that!” But if you ever feel that God is utterly disappointed in you and that the Christian walk is a heavy, heavy burden (even though Jesus says it isn’t), then you are buying into Satan’s individually-tailored lies for you.
Thus far I’ve referred to the Law of Moses, but, in fact, we are incapable of relating to God through any laws–even church laws. Most churches do their best to be free and full of the grace of God, but congregations still demand, “Just tell us what to do! How can we be good people and serve God?” Or perhaps it’s the church leadership which demands its congregation, “Do these things in order to repent and be good for God!” So our churches come up with creeds, Bible studies, guidelines, advice, etc. which attempt to enumerate the good things God wants us to do and the bad things God wants us to stay away from. And some even create an infrastructure to allow us (at least in the short term) to abide by these church rules: accountability partners, confession groups, keeping statistics, etc. Does this sound familiar? It should because it’s the very definition of the law is!
Just as I said about our civil laws, I’m not saying the church shouldn’t try to help its members know how to serve God and be better disciples. They should. The problem is that due to our heritage with Adam and Eve, we will unavoidably begin to relate to God through these church guidelines, advising, discipling, etc. instead of being secure in our relationship with God and trying to better ourselves for reasons beyond “I must do this in order for God to like or love me”.
Let me further explain the difference between relating to God through love compared to obedience. The difference may seem subtle, but it’s huge and it’s illustrated in the Garden of Eden. Before eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve had the Spirit of God in them and related to him through love. There was only one law, and this law had to exist in order to give them free will and the ability to choose how they would relate to their God. Before they ate from the tree, they depended on God’s love and grace and embraced their weak position of being reliant on him. Eating from the tree and disobeying God changed everything! Now they had chosen (whether they fully understood or not) that they wanted to be like God, no longer relying on him but instead relying on their own abilities. As such, God also had to treat them differently: he had treat them as entities knowing and adhering to good and abstaining from all evil. He now had to administer justice for the sins they committed. If you’ve ever wondered why there is such a stark difference between the way God acted during the Old and New Covenants, this is precisely why. This different treatment of humanity by God can be clearly seen in Exodus 32 with Moses and the golden calf. Moses had to beg God to stay with the Jews and to not destroy them altogether!
What if relating to God through obedience were the way to go? I had a friend in college who literally played a “God game”. The idea was to do more good things than bad things. Did you sin a bunch in the morning? It’s okay, just invite a bunch of people to church later on. It sounds crazy, but everyone who tries to relate to God through obedience is playing this game (albeit less obviously). The thing is our human score keeping is bound to be way off. We count the sins that we’re aware of or that are stressed by the church we go to, but we miss countless others. Remember that God is the perfect judge and will not miss anything. Also, none of the good things you do in actuality counteract the sins we commit (Rom 3:23). So at the end of the day, you think the score is 5-4 (good to bad), but it’s probably more like 0-108.
Therefore let us embrace the grace of God which Jesus paid for with his life. Know that you are loved and accepted and understood by your God. Do work to repent of sin and become a better disciple–not to be accepted by God–but to better love yourself and avoid hurting those in your life, especially those you deeply love.
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