Godly Expression 1: The Law

“Is there a God? Who is He? What’s he like? How can we know for sure?” Tough questions, for sure. But what’s the answer to them for a Christian? Today I’m starting a series (hopefully) of posts, I’m going to attempt to answer them by examining some of the ways God has expressed himself to us. And I’m going to start with one of the toughest concepts: the Law.

So first, lets look at some of the Law. Here’s maybe the most famous part, the Ten Commandments (summed up):

1. You shall have no other gods before me
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5. Honor your Father and Mother
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
10a. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house
10b. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife

So what do these laws say about who God is? Well, a few things.

1.) God is a God of ORDER. God is not someone who wants us to do whatever we want. He wants order. 1 Corinthians 14:40 says: “But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” Even the way the universe works shows a certain order to things. The seasons come and go in the same order. The electrons of and atom go around in the same way for every single atom of the same element. The universe is ordered because God created it that way to show us just a small part of who He is.

The next point is a little harder for us to swallow. It’s something we don’t like to admit.

2.) God is a God of JUSTICE “Justice? You mean God will punish us?!?! But I thought God was a God of love!” Indeed He is. 1 John 4:8 tells us that (”Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”) But that’s not all He is.

When I was younger, I used to play a lot (A LOT) of Dungeons and Dragons. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a pen and paper table top game where you create characters. Medieval characters. Yes, I am a huge nerd. So you might decide, “I want to make a warrior!” So you’d give him a high strength score so he could hit things hard(!), a high constitution so that he was tough and could take a lot of punishment, a high dexterity so that he could get out of the way of people trying to hit him, so on and so forth. So after all this, you have to decide what kind of personality he’s going to have. This was reflected in something called “alignment.” Still with me? Alignment was broken into two parts. The first part was where you decided if the character was evil, neutral, or good. Pretty easy right? But there’s another part, which is a little harder to understand. This part was where you selected either “chaotic”, “neutral”, or “lawful”. So if you wanted him to be a mobster-like character, you’d select “Lawful” and “Evil”, showing that he does bad things, but there’s an order to him doing bad things. Or if he was a Robin Hood style character, he might be “Chaotic” and “Good”, showing that he doesn’t care what he has to do to do good deeds.

So if you say “God is love,” that’s true. But that’s only one side of his “alignment.” He’s good, but he’s also lawful. And he will not permit someone to break His law, and punishes those who do. It’s a part of his character.

Let’s go with another example. Let’s say you meet a person for the first time. After introductions are over, you might ask this person, “What do you do for a living?” Let’s say they respond, “I’m a painter.” This peaks your interest a bit, so you ask “Oh really? What have you painted?” To this the person responds, “I’ve never painted anything. In fact, I don’t own any brushes or paint at all.” What would your reaction be? “You say you’re a painter but you’ve never painted anything!?!? You’re not a painter at all!”

The same is true of God. If He says that He is just, yet never displays His justice, He’s not really just at all.

And this is why there are bad people in the world. They’re here doing bad things so that God might display His justice through them. God punishes them so that His children might better know who He is. God also punishes His children so that His children might better know who He is. And He does it by giving us His law and holding us to it. His law is an expression of Himself to us so that we might know Him for who He is.

Tags: expression, God