"I DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD"

Romans 7:22

Pastor Don Fortner
Grace Baptist Church of Danville
2734 Old Stanford Road
Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

Let me give you some sane, biblical instruction about believers and the law of God. Because we believe that salvation is in Christ alone, altogether a work of God's pure, free, sovereign, immutable grace, and because we refuse to be brought under the irksome yoke of bondage to the law, believers are often accused of being antinomians, people who are against, or opposed to, the law of God.

The charge is totally slanderous and without foundation. God's people are not rebel's to God's law. We love the law of God. It is holy, just and good. We simply acknowledge our sinfulness and complete inability to obey the law. Trusting Christ as our Lord and Savior, we do not live by the rule of the law. We live by the rule of grace and love. But no believer lives in rebellion to the law of God.

Every true born child of God can honestly say, with the apostle Paul, "I delight in the law." With David, we sing, "Oh how I love thy law, O God!" Religious people love to talk about the law. Believers love the law. Religious people hang the ten commandments up on the walls of churches, their houses, and school rooms, and go to court to try to make others see how devoted they are. Believers, delight in the law. Religious people want to make the law a rule by which they can govern the lives of others. Believers rejoice in the law as the schoolmaster which brings sinners to Christ.

The law of God was never intended by God to be weapon of battle for religious warfare. It is that by which God exposes and condemns our sin. The law tells us what sin is, and condemns the sinner. It can do nothing else, and was never intended to do anything else. The law, by exposing and condemning our sin, shuts us up to Christ alone as our Savior. God's holy law makes it clear that salvation must be by grace alone, through the merits of Christ's obedience and blood as the sinner's Substitute. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture.

Sinners are, and must be, saved by grace alone, without the works of the law. The Scriptures state this emphatically (Rom. 3:20, 28; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8-9; 2 Tim. 1:9). No man can keep God's law. It must be kept for us; and it was by Christ.

Our standing and acceptance with God is entirely in Christ. We are "accepted in the Beloved". God accepts believing sinners in Christ alone, only for his sake and only through the merits of his righteousness and shed blood. Our salvation is altogether in Christ our Substitute. He performed the work. Neither our righteousness nor our sins in any way affect our relationship with God (Rom. 5:18-21). Our acceptance with God in Christ is an eternal and an immutable acceptance. It never varies.

Every believer is completely free from the law of God in Christ (Rom. 6:14; 7:1, 4; 8:1; 10:4). We are free from the law's curse and condemnation, free from the law's rituals and ceremonies, and free from the law's rule. Our lives are not motivated, ruled and governed by the Mosaic law. And our lives are not subject to the laws of human religion, custom and tradition (Col. 2:16-23). I will defend to my death the liberty of every believer to live in this world, being ruled only by his own conscience and his love for Christ in all matters of indifference. We will not be subject to the rules which self-righteous religionists endeavor to impose upon us.

Yet, you can be sure of this fact: -- Any professed believer who lives in willful violation of and rebellion to the moral law of God is lost. His profession of faith is a false profession, nothing more than a pretentious show of hypocrisy. All true believers "delight in the law of God after the inward man." Do you?

AMEN.