Chapter 20: Christ Is the Rule, Not the Law

I used to preach the law to Christians. I did it for years. And I did it because I thought I was helping them. I thought if I could just get them to see the standard, to feel the weight of God’s holiness, to understand how far short they fell, it would motivate them to live better. To try harder. To be more disciplined, more obedient, more serious about their walk.

And it worked, in a sense. It produced guilt. It produced effort. It produced the kind of grim, teeth-clenched religion where every failure felt like a betrayal and every Sunday was a fresh opportunity to recommit to doing better this week. It was exhausting. And it was exactly what the Pharisees were selling in the first century, repackaged in a sovereign grace wrapper.

I was pointing believers to the law. And every time I did, I was taking their eyes off Christ.

Dead to the Law

This is one of the hardest things for religious people to hear, and I’m going to say it as plainly as I can.

The believer is dead to all the law. Not just the ceremonial law. Not just the civil law. Not just the sacrificial system. All of it. The moral law included. The Ten Commandments included. Every requirement, every standard, every “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” that was written on stone tablets and delivered at Sinai - the believer is dead to it. Completely. Finally. Irreversibly.

“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” (Romans 7:4)

Dead to the law. By the body of Christ. Not partially dead. Not dead to some parts and alive to others. Dead. And the purpose of being dead to the law is stated right there in the verse: that ye should be married to another. You can’t be married to two husbands. You can’t serve Christ and serve the law at the same time. The law was the old husband. Christ is the new one. And the old husband died when Christ died. The marriage is over.

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” (Romans 10:4)

The end of the law. Not the modifier of the law. Not the reinterpreter of the law. Not the one who softened the law’s demands so we could keep up with them. The end. Christ brought the law to its conclusion. He fulfilled every requirement, met every standard, satisfied every demand, and then said “It is finished” (John 19:30). And when He said it, He meant it.

The Purpose of the Law

If the believer is dead to the law, what was the law for in the first place? This is where most people’s theology breaks down, because they’ve been taught that the law is God’s eternal moral standard for all people in all ages. And if that were true, you couldn’t be dead to it. You’d always be under it. It would be as permanent and binding as gravity.

But Paul says something very different about the law’s purpose.

“Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Galatians 3:19)

The law was added. Added to what? Added to the covenant of grace that was already running, as we established in Chapter 8. And it was added for a specific, temporary purpose: because of transgressions. Not to stop transgressions. To increase them. To shine a light on sin so bright that the sinner would have no escape except Christ.

“Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” (Romans 5:20)

The law entered that the offence might abound. Read that again. The law didn’t come to decrease sin. It came to increase it. The law was a curse. Paul says so explicitly.

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13)

A curse. And he goes further:

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)

The law was a schoolmaster. A tutor. A temporary institution with one job: drive the elect to Christ by showing them they couldn’t keep it. That’s it. That’s the whole purpose. The law was never meant to be the believer’s rule for living. It was meant to be the thing that broke them so they’d run to someone who could keep it for them.

And once the schoolmaster has done its job, the student graduates. “But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:25). The job is finished. The law accomplished its purpose. The believer moves on to Christ.

Christ Is the Rule

So if the law isn’t the believer’s rule for living, what is?

Christ.

“The love of Christ constraineth us.” (2 Corinthians 5:14)

The motivation for the Christian life is not legislation. It’s love. The believer doesn’t look at a set of commandments written on stone and grit their teeth to obey. They look at a Person who loved them unto death, and they are constrained by that love. The Greek word there, sunecho, means to be hemmed in, pressed from every side, held in a grip you can’t escape. The love of Christ doesn’t suggest obedience. It produces it. From the inside out.

This is where the framework meets ethics. In the language of this book, the law is materialism applied to ethics. It takes the visible, the written code, the external standard, and imposes it from the outside. You read the rule. You try to keep the rule. You fail. You feel guilty. You try again. The entire mechanism is external. It’s the visible trying to produce the invisible.

Grace is idealism applied to ethics. The invisible, the indwelling Spirit, the love of Christ shed abroad in the heart, produces the visible, a life of love. The movement goes the right direction. From the inside out. From the firmware to the application layer. From the Spirit to the life.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2)

There are two laws in that verse. The law of sin and death is the Mosaic law, the curse, the schoolmaster. The law of the Spirit of life is Christ Himself, living in the believer through the Spirit. And the second has made the believer free from the first. Not bound by both. Free from one. Bound to the other.

And the difference matters enormously, because the law of the Spirit doesn’t work like the law of Moses. Moses says “do this.” The Spirit says “I am doing this in you.” Moses demands. The Spirit produces. Moses condemns failure. The Spirit covers it. Moses is a mirror. The Spirit is a surgeon.

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4)

The law could not do what needed to be done. It was weak through the flesh. Not weak in itself, but weak in its ability to produce righteousness in fallen people. The standard was perfect. The subjects were dead. And you can write the most beautiful set of rules the world has ever seen, and if the people you hand them to are spiritually dead, the rules will only produce condemnation. That’s all the law ever did. That’s all the law ever can do.

But what the law could not do, God did. By sending His Son. By the Spirit. By the new covenant written on the heart, not on stone. And the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us - not by us. In us. By the Spirit. The law’s demands are met, but they’re met by someone else, living in us, producing the fruit we could never produce on our own.

Pointing Believers to the Law Takes Their Eyes Off Christ

This is where the rubber meets the road, and this is where I lost friends over the years.

If a believer is struggling with sin, the worst thing you can do is point them to the law. Because the law has no power to fix the problem. The law can identify the sin. The law can condemn the sinner. But the law cannot heal, restore, empower, or change anyone. It was never designed to.

When you point a struggling believer to the Ten Commandments, you are doing exactly what the Galatian Judaizers were doing. You are taking someone who has been set free in Christ and putting them back under the very thing Christ freed them from.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)

Paul calls the law a yoke of bondage. And he says stand fast in liberty. Don’t go back. Don’t let anyone drag you back. The liberty is the point. Christ died to produce it. And anyone who puts the believer back under the law, even with good intentions, even with Bible verses, even with tears in their eyes, is undoing what Christ accomplished.

Point the struggling believer to Christ. Tell them about His love. Tell them about His finished work. Tell them about the Spirit who dwells in them and is working in them even when they can’t feel it. Tell them the Father sees them in Christ, not in their failure. Tell them they are complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). Tell them nothing can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

That’s what changes a person. Not the law. Christ.

The Three Divisions of the Law

I want to address something that I hear constantly from people who disagree with this chapter. They’ll say, “We agree that the ceremonial law is fulfilled. And the civil law was for Israel. But the moral law - the Ten Commandments - is eternal and binding.”

This is the standard Reformed position, and it’s wrong.

Paul never divides the law into three categories. That’s a theological construction imposed on the text, not derived from it. When Paul says the believer is dead to the law, he doesn’t add “except the moral part.” When he says Christ is the end of the law, he doesn’t footnote “the ceremonial and civil portions.” When he says the law was a schoolmaster that we’re no longer under, he doesn’t exempt the Decalogue.

“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:14)

Not under the law. Under grace. And Paul’s argument in Romans 7 makes this even clearer:

“For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” (Romans 7:7)

“Thou shalt not covet” is the tenth commandment. It’s in the Decalogue. It’s the moral law, by anyone’s reckoning. And Paul uses it as his example of the law that produced sin in him. The very commandment that Reformed theology says is eternal and binding is the commandment Paul uses to illustrate why the believer needs to be dead to the law.

Christ fulfilled all of it. Not just the types and shadows. Not just the dietary laws and the sacrificial system. All of it. Every jot and tittle (Matthew 5:18). And what Christ fulfilled, the believer is free from. Completely. That doesn’t mean the law was bad. It means the law finished its job. The schoolmaster taught the lesson. The student graduated.

Objections and Answers

“If believers aren’t under the law, what stops them from sinning?”

The Holy Spirit. The law never stopped anyone from sinning. Paul tells you this directly: “The law entered, that the offence might abound” (Romans 5:20). The law increased sin. It didn’t decrease it. The law was powerless to produce righteousness in fallen people. The Spirit does what the law never could. “The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). The constraint isn’t a written code imposed from outside. It’s a living Person working from inside. And the Person is far more effective than the code ever was.

“The moral law is eternal and binding on all people.”

Christ fulfilled all of it. The believer is dead to the law by the body of Christ (Romans 7:4). When Christ died, the law’s claim on the believer died with Him. The law has no authority over a dead man. “For he that is dead is freed from sin” (Romans 6:7). And “ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). You can’t be under an eternal, binding law and simultaneously dead to it and free from it. Paul says you’re dead to it and free from it. I’ll take Paul over the Westminster Confession.

“This is antinomianism.”

Let me tell you what real antinomianism looks like. Real antinomians lower God’s law to a standard they think they can keep. They say, “God’s law is reasonable. God’s demands are attainable. If you just try hard enough and surrender enough and commit enough, you can meet the standard.” That is lowering the law. That is anti-law, because it replaces God’s actual standard with a watered-down version humans can manage.

God’s standard is perfection. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Only Christ met it. Only Christ could meet it. And resting in His perfect obedience isn’t lawlessness. It’s the only honest response to a law that demands what no human being has ever been able to give. The man who says “I am dead to the law because Christ fulfilled it for me” has the highest view of the law - because he acknowledges it demanded perfection, and he knows he couldn’t deliver it.

“Without the law as a guide, how do believers know right from wrong?”

By the Spirit. “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you” (1 John 2:27). The Spirit who dwells in the believer is the same God who wrote the law. He doesn’t need the written code to teach His people. He writes it on their hearts directly. “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). The new covenant doesn’t use the old mechanism. The rules are the same. The delivery system is entirely different.