The Reasoning Behind the Rule

When my oldest daughter was two years old, she knew the meaning of the world "No" quite well. I know she did, because we used that word to keep her away from dangerous things. Things like: Don't touch the razor sharp knife on the counter, don't stick your finger in the electrical socket, don't go near the road because there's a car coming, don't touch the stove because it's hot.

Some of those No-things, we managed to navigate with safety equipment: plugs in the sockets, knives out of reach (until they grew taller), locking the cabinet doors where I kept my cleaning supplies, etc. 

But some things weren't completely unavoidable, and they required an extra sharp pair of eyes to make sure she didn't get hurt.

My daughter was (and still is) very sensitive, and a sharp No! from me would make the tears puddle in her huge blue eyes. While I felt horrible for making her cry, I'd do it again and again and again, if I had to, to keep her from hurting herself.

The thing is, though, while she was still very young, her life experience had not yet taught her why I said no. She knew she wasn't supposed to do certain things, but she didn't understand the reasoning behind the rule. One of the things she knew she wasn't supposed to do -- but didn't understand the reasoning behind the rule -- was touching the shiny, black, glass-topped stove we had. 

That stove was alluring; it was pretty, and my daughter is a big texture person. That is, she loves smooth things or soft things -- more so than most people I know. So she wanted to touch the smooth surface of the stove. She really wanted to touch the smooth surface of the stove. I told her no a lot in regard to that stove.

You know where this is going. One day, when her daddy was carrying her through the kitchen soon after I'd finished cooking supper, she leaned over before he could stop her... and placed her hand flat on a still-red-hot burner.

The fall-out was traumatic, probably more so for me than for her. Watching your own two-year-old suffer while you're helpless to take away the pain is one of the worst things imaginable. We ran cold water over her poor little hand for a long while and kept cold packs on it and tried every medicine in the medicine cabinet we could find and gave her Tylenol to manage the pain... but nothing helped much. She cried and cried and cried...

But here's the thing: Now she knew why we'd told her No!

There was a reason for the rule, and she painfully discovered that reason when she broke the rule.

So, in Romans 3:21-31, Paul is getting ready to give us some good news, but before we can get there, he's got to finish laying out -- in reasoned, rational logic -- why that good news... was so good. So in Romans 3:1-20, Paul writes about the law and what it means to live according to the law... or to break the law.

He states unequivocally: "Let God be true and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4). I've talked about the "plumbline" of Scripture before (if you haven't had a chance, check out "Your Sword Isn't for Cutting Cake"). God is the standard by which we measure all else, and so, as God is true, as Jesus is THE Truth (check out yesterday's post: "Cut to the Core"), everything that deviates or departs or veers away from that standard of measurement is false. Paul punches it home: Anything apart from God Who is Truth is a lie. 

Let God be true and every man a liar. In the places where we depart from God, that's where falseness comes, that's where unsoundness comes, that's where instability and integral faults arise.

Apparently, something that was happening in Paul's day was that some people were arguing that if this was so -- if these deviations showed God's truth more clearly, using the concept of the contrast between truth and false integrity -- then people should do more evil in order to highlight "good." 

Y'all, let's remember, please, that darkness doesn't become darker just because there is light. Rather light makes darkness flee! Darkness cannot exist in the light. Darkness hides where light does not touch, so if people argue that you can live and act in the light and continue doing dark things in order to highlight that light...

You can almost see why Paul throw his papers in the air and walks away. He says in frustration: "Their condemnation is deserved" (Romans 3:8).

Then Paul lays out the barren, tragic landscape in order to introduce this final passage of the chapter (which I'll get to tomorrow). He says: "What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves (ouch, Paul!); their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips (Hmm, serpents and sin... that seems like a familiar story). Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God in their eyes" (Romans 3:9-18). 

Y'all, this passage is a gut-punch. Paul takes a whole slew of Scriptures from the Old Testament, a mixture of references from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes and Isaiah... and he wraps it all up and hurls it at his Roman audience like: Y'all may as well pack your bags and go home. There will be no admittance to glory today. Heaven is closed. The Way is barred. Sin is too great, the Law too plumbline-ish, Truth too truthful, the darkness too dark, the chains too strong, hell too hot, hope too nonexistent...

He finishes off this tragic landscape with this: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law; rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin" (Romans 3:19-20).

Paul says: There is no way by the law... to heaven, to hope, to God. NO way. None... by that route.

But he's getting ready to introduce another route. Hang on, hope's coming. First Paul has to finish explaining why there's no admission through this entrance.

Because there's a standard. And we know what that standard is because there's a law that states that standard. It's the heavenly No! It's the God-given Don't touch, it's hot! It's the Perfect Parent's boundaries that say: Sin takes us away from righteousness. 

And while sin looks like a shiny, black, glass-topped stove that's smooth and pretty and touchable... the Lord knows the dangers hiding just beneath the surface. He knows the pain that sin brings. He knows our own human wants that lead us toward it. 

May I say this? Humans don't have the best track record when it comes to making our own choices. We consistently seem to choose for our own satisfaction instead of looking out for the needs of others. We see shiny, black, glass-topped stoves and we want what we want, instead of reaching for our parent instead. So pain follows swiftly behind our choices, because we choose wrongly.

And "through the law, we become conscious of sin." The boundaries are there, and we know about them, because we blow right by them.

To our shame, our sorrow, our regret, our utter failure.

And it hurts. Sometimes the consequences hurt a lot.

I can't just leave it there until tomorrow. Here's the beautiful trajectory change right in the middle of that tragic landscape. Paul says: "But now -- but now!! Not before this, but now!! -- a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify!" (Romans 3:21)

Wait... we're not chained under the law of sin and death? Here's a peek at the end of this story: Romans 8:1-2: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death!"

We'll talk about that amazing hope tomorrow. Thank Jesus that we've already got that amazing hope. But we'll talk about it more tomorrow.