God's Hates Sinners, But Praise God He Also Loves Sinners

Sometimes I hear people say that God loves the sinner but hates the sin. The problem with this statement is there are many verses in the Bible that say God hates sinners. After all, He will send sinners to hell forever where He will punish and torment them forever and ever to the praise of His glorious justice. 

It's more truthful and Biblically accurate to say: "God hates sinners, but praise God He also loves sinners." This is exactly what Ephesians 2:3-4 teaches: 

. . . we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind [God hates sinners]. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us . . . . [but praise God He also loves sinners!]

Most people know verses in the Bible that speak of God's love for sinners. But many are unfamiliar with the verses (or they just avoid them) that teach God hates sinners. Here is a short list:

Leviticus 20:23: And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. 

Leviticus 26:30: And I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you.  

Deuteronomy 18:12: for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. 

Deuteronomy 25:16: For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the LORD your God. 

Psalm 5:5-6: The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. 

Psalm 11:5-6: The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. 

Psalm 106:40: Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage; 

Proverbs 3:32: for the devious person is an abomination to the LORD

Proverbs 6:16-19: There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. 

Proverbs 16:5: Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. 

Proverbs 17:15: He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD. 

Malachi 1:2-3: Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. 

Romans 9:13: As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." 

For more information on this topic, please read:

God Loves The Sinner, But Hates The Sin? by John Piper

God Hates Wicked People by Tim Challies

Is It True That God “Loves The Sinner But Hates The Sin”? by Stephen Nichols

Is It Biblical To Say “God Loves The Sinner, But Hates The Sin?” by Burk Parsons

Does God Hate Sin, But Love the Sinner? (Ask David Platt) by David Platt

An Unborn Child's Perspective On Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation Hearing

It's a big day for me today, but a sad day. Some of the leaders of those who have been born are getting to know one of the judges who could very well decide whether I live or die. I am scared to death, literally. Some of the biggest execution companies that put people like me to death support this judge's nomination. And she is telling the leaders that the horrific law that made it legal to chop me and others like me up in pieces is "settled law." I hope and pray for the day when this wicked law is abolished. I wonder if there have been other groups of people like me who have suffered and died under such tyrannical laws that made their murder and bondage legal? I hope this evil law is changed before I have to face my own death and they cut my head off and chop my body parts to pieces. 

The judge, Mrs. Jackson, was asked when life begins. Sadly, she answered that she does not know. I am alive! I feel pain! And even if I didn't feel pain, murder is still wrong. Won't anyone listen to my silent screams! Will anyone hear?

There are even people who claim to believe God's Word - that all human beings, even me, are made in the image of God - yet they are cheering Mrs. Jackson on and excited about her nomination. Sadly, they just view my life or death and the lives and deaths of millions like me as one more political issue among many. And they often place more importance on other issues that are more beneficial to them. It seems so many people care only about people like themselves - and not like me. People are so selfish. That's one of the reasons so many like me die. We are the most innocent, most helpless, most cruelly treated people on the face of the earth - the unborn.

There was a moment during these hearings when the judge's daughter was smiling at her. I guess she is so proud of her mother's achievements. But I wonder if her daughter understands what this achievement she is so proud of means for me? For me, this achievement means I will die soon. It means many millions more will die soon. It means death, bloodshed, genocide, mass murder, and the untold miseries, shrieks, and cries of many more like me. It means many millions of daughters will never be able to smile about anything because their mothers will continue to have the right to kill them. Why can't people see this? Sometimes I wonder if the people who are born and who profess so loudly the importance of the fact that we humans are made in the image of God really believe that this truth applies to me. They sure don't seem to act like it. They rejoice when people like Mrs. Jackson are put in power to judge. They love this because she is like them, and she is born. But for me, her confirmation means certain death. For me, her confirmation means I will never be born. For me, her confirmation means I will never be able to smile at my mother, or at anyone else. May God so work so that none of this is so. May God save Mrs. Jackson and every other judge and change their minds about abortion and change their minds about me so that I too may be able to smile one day.

Please beg the LORD in prayer, in Jesus' name, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, that He would save all these leaders and judges and change their hearts so that they would fear God, trust Jesus, obey Him, and stand up to protect my life and the millions of lives that are at stake. Please pray that this evil law that signs my death sentence will be abolished forever. Please pray that laws all over the world would be changed to protect innocent victims like me. Please pray people's eyes would be opened to see the horror of the only unthinkable sin mentioned in the whole Bible.

Please hear my cry from the womb and help me!

I am utterly alone!

I am in darkness!

No one wants me!

No one (it seems) loves me!

My father and mother have forsaken me, and even want to kill me!

No doctors will help me - they only seek to kill me!

Some of the most powerful people in the world fight against me having even the most basic human rights, like many of these most powerful judges like Judge Jackson!

Millions believe I am not even human - not worthy of life outside the womb!

Many "pastors" and "Christians" do not stand up for me!

Many who claim to love me make voting decisions that ensure I will never see the light of day!

Many who claim to trust and love God celebrate when people are put in power who make and support laws that will result in my death!

Laws are in place to ensure I continue to be utterly abused and murdered!

I am the most innocent!

I am the most persecuted!

I am the most vulnerable!

I am the most helpless!

I am the most forgotten!

I am the most alone!

I am the most widely killed, oppressed, and abused in the history of mankind!

Soon, I will face one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable - a man will use a knife to cut off my arms and legs and head - and I will scream and cry - but no one will hear me - no one will care!

I am an unborn child about to be aborted!

Please help me!

For more information about abortion, please read: To Be Pro-Choice Is To Be Pro-Murder And Anti-Christ

For an excellent presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, please watch: American Gospel: Christ Alone

You can watch the full documentary about the Gospel with a free trial here.

Christ Is Messiah Come And See!

Dr. Klaas Schilder On The Sufferings Of Christ

I first recall hearing Dr. Klaas Schilder's name from one of my Old Testament Professors at Westminster Seminary California. In his commentary on Jonah, while comparing Christ and Jonah, Dr. Bryan Estelle writes:

Jesus Christ underwent abandonment of his own accord, not for his own sins and rebellion (like Jonah) . . . This cup [The cup Jesus asked His Father to take away from Him in Mark 14:36] is the cup of God’s wrath against sin. Why did Christ not want to partake of this cup? It meant being utterly forsaken by God . . . this abandonment for Christ was the experience of an active wrath [or anger!] exerted upon him by his heavenly Father. God the Father was sending all the torments of hell against the Son. As Klaas Schilder says, it is as if he were in the arena, like the martyrs of old, watching the animals being released one by one to tear at his flesh and crush his bones. And throughout the process, he saw his heavenly Father releasing the wrath against him, all the storehouses of wrath . . . Christ had to be identified with mankind in every respect, including the full experience of death itself: this was hell. He went through hell, so to speak, for a heavenly cause. This was separation from God himself, and what Christ had to experience . . . it was not a literal hell into which he descended; it was the experience of hell as it is known in God-forsakenness.

Dr. Schilder (1890-1952) was a Dutch theologian who served the Reformed Church in the Netherlands. Geoff Thomas writes: "The life of Klaas Schilder is fascinating, and anyone who has read his trilogy on the death of Christ will realize that in him you are confronted by a very great man."

Dr. Schilder is a faithful guide to rightly understand Penal Substitution (the heart of the Gospel) and the Cross of our LORD Jesus Christ. Below are a series of statements he made about the center of the Christian faith and our only boast: the cross. These quotations come from his books on the death of Christ. All three of his books can be ordered at Sovereign Grace Publishers.

We know that a drunken man cannot stand; he sinks down. Nor can a dazed man "come near"; he stumbles, he gropes. But Jesus who refuses the myrrh both stands and conies near. Now He ascends to the altars of God, to God, to His God, the source of suffering. Now He descends into hell and yearns for the commandments. God is striking Him — hence He must feel the pain. Jesus feels that the heavenly pronouncement of justice differs from that which is pronounced on earth. When God punishes He punishes completely. His verdict is not characterized by that inner contradiction which characterizes the verdict of a Pilate who wounds the victim with a nail while he soothes him with myrrh. When God in His flaming wrath begins to punish, He does not administer one stroke too many, nor one stroke too brutally. Hence every stroke He gives must be felt. God is not playing a game. The world may hold a sword in one hand and a soothing cup in the other but God holds a sword in the one hand and a sword in the other, God is wholly love or He is wholly wrath. Therefore that, cup of myrrh could not be given Him by God.

The meaning of "this cup" can be no other than the fact that Christ finds the door of His Father’s house closed to Him. Now is the Son the lost Son. He would arise and go to His Father, but the Father is not awaiting Him; the door of the heavenly mansion is closed. The Judge has barred Him from access. “There is no fear in love.” Love and fear, yes. There are two worlds. One is the world of heaven. There love is without fear. Casting out fear can have no meaning in heaven, for heaven is exalted above any need of it. The other world is the world of hell. In hell there is no love in fear; there fear has sunk to a plane so low that it can not possibly communicate with love. Christ Jesus is being bandied back and forth between these two worlds.

The hour of Gethsemane — the release of the devils! They are coming now, for now they may come. Their privilege is not, indeed, the most pleasing application of God’s justice but, nevertheless, they come with His permission. This is the hour of high noon in the great world-day. They come; they have their hour; they have their authority. God allows them to come, for they must begin the battle against the Son of man. And they find Him, laden with sin. That is why they are authorized to let judgment accrue to Him. God is blowing the flames of judgment against His son, because He has made Him to be a curse. Hence, those who fan the furnace in God’s universe may employ their arts to blow the flame into a whiter heat, to drive the hot vapors of the Wrath of the Eternal quite up to and against the heart of Jesus. This is their hour and their province. God’s permission is absolute. The divine activity represented in that permission is also absolute. God Himself throws open the doors of the prison-house of hell; and all the ominous demons creep out of it and rush to Jesus, to hiss and sting Him into death.

But the forsaking of God is also positive. God is directly sending the torments of hell against Christ . . . It is God who looses the devils against Him . . . The Spirit of Christ, as it battles against the forces of hell for three hours, sees the devils rising up against Him, and as He sees it, God is taking the role of the supervisor in the arena, and it is God who releases the lions, the bulls and goats and cattle of Bashan, and it is God who releases the dogs (Psalm 22) against the great martyr with an agonizing calmness. It is God who lifts the doors of the cages . . . Just as the martyrs in the arena saw the man who opened the doors of the cages, and maintained the supervision from that point on, so the Saviour saw God in His arena . . . He released the Dragon . . . the son, the shepherd is being destroyed. Listen to the summons of the Lord of heaven: sword, awake thou against my shepherd.

There, too, we confess that the Mediator who is to truly redeem us must consciously experience in His earthly life, before His death, before His departure from the world and from the circumference of time, that which the lost human being will suffer after his death and on the other side of this bourne. Before the Mediator can say "It is finished," the eternal punishment, the eternal, perfect expression of an unrestrained and unbounded wrath of God must be endured and left behind. Not after His death, understand, but before His death. Not in the other world, but in this world.

However, no one will see the offer in this event unless he sees it by faith. The knife of the sacrifice had always been manipulated by the hand of a priest. These spikes, however, are being driven through His flesh by the firm hand of the accomplices of Cain. Nevertheless, this is the offer. The whole of Christ's own work lies behind the act of the soldiers. He Himself led the process of events to this point; He Himself arranged His feet upon the accursed wood; in the last analysis He Himself manipulated the nails and the hammer. He is the priest, therefore; He has nailed Himself to the cross. He has slain Himself. That is why the Lamb, after a while, can "stand as the slain," hallelujah!                                                                                                                       

God's hand, therefore, strikes most terribly at the Son of man. God breaks Him into pieces. God alone can make and break. Fear Him who cannot fail to kill the body when He must kill the soul, the soul of Him Who has been made sin. Fear Him in this portentous hour Who up to this time has withheld all His nails and lightnings in order that they might strike the Son of man now. God can only despise Jesus; God must turn His ear and eye aside from His supplication.

At that time, therefore, Christ had been dead. He had also endured this death in His body, for His whole human existence suffered the affliction of hell. The flesh, too, had been consumed in God’s anger, and forsaken.

It is not the coming of God in wrath, but the recession of God's love which determines the diction of the fourth utterance from the cross.

His abandonment is not a phase of a latent process of acceptance, but is the essence of the process of rejection itself . . . For this poet, apparently David himself, the abandonment is a relative one. For Christ it is absolute. For David it is a feeling that he lacks the blessings of grace; for Christ it is reality . . . For this Christ, God in absolute sense was the "wholly Other." That, and the wholly and diametrically Opposed One . . . The abandonment on the cross therefore was an objective abandonment.

This is mystery. We cannot appreciate it because - to refer to what was said a moment ago - we have not been in the country of the poet. His country was heaven, and it is hell. We have not understood the poet, will never understand Him, because He is God, because He is in heaven, and because He therefore in His speaking transcends our comprehension. Nor will we be able to think as we should about the poem itself, for the poet is now in hell. Whoever would understand Him as He is in His hellish torture must have been in hell; and may God forbid that. Yes, God Almighty forbid that we should ever enter into the country of this poet. May He protect us from a comprehension of the fourth utterance from the cross. God forbid that we should concoct a theology of experience for we shall have to pay the expensive price of damnation for it. 

In fact, even if someone after this life, and in the real suffering of the lost condition, should want to reflect upon the torture of Christ, which He experienced as God forsook Him, he would find that an eternal impossibility still. For whoever is in hell outside of Christ is here as a sinner; his pollution has not been annihilated. But Christ suffered the pain of hell as the holy man, and besides as the Person of the Eternal Son. No one ever was in hell in that way, and no one will ever be there in that way. The fourth utterance from the cross is unapproachable to every creature on earth, in hell or in heaven. 

Klaas Schilder, Christ In His Suffering, Trial, And Crucified, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans) 1938. (I used a Kindle edition no longer available.)

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

To learn more about the great King Jesus and His glorious Gospel message, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here with a free, 3 day trial.

Christ Jesus Came To Pierce, Divide!

"That's My King!" In Matthew 10!

Christ Jesus Is The God Who Gave
Authority To Heal And Waive
All Disease And Demon Knave
To His Disciples Called And Brave
They’d Preach The Kingdom That We Crave
Yet When Time Came To Die And Save
They Fled And Under Pressure Cave
To Fear And Sin They Were A Slave
But Christ Rose Up And Crushed The Grave
By Faith Alone We’re Freed His Slave
For He’s The One Who’s Truly Brave

He Died And Everything He Gave
Then Rose A Path To Glory Pave
So He Alone We Love And Crave
Oh Praise His Name Who Came To Save!

That's my King!

Christ Jesus Taught, Prepared, And Sent

His Loved Apostles Out They Went

To The Lost Of Israel’s Tent

They’d Preach And Heal In Love Be Spent

Raise The Dead And Be Content

If Well Received Their Peace Present

If Not Received With Dust Dissent

They’ll Face Unbearable Torment

Hallelujah! Christ Was Sent

To Save From This Awful Judgment

He Died And Rose With Full Intent

To End All Death With Its Lament

By Faith Alone Please Trust, Repent

To His Commands Give Full Consent

In Him The Joys Won’t Relent

He Is Enough Your Praises Vent

For He’s Our Everything Event!

That's my King! Do you know Him?!

Christ Jesus Came For His Name’s Sake

The Lion-Lamb Who’d Crush The Snake

The Sheep Who’d Eat The Wolves And Take

A People For Himself To Make 

A New Creation Wide Awake

His Innocence Like Doves Partake

The Wisest Man Who Ever Spake

Yet Died And Rose Sin’s Power To Break

That Canceled Sin We Now Forsake

And Die And Suffer For His Sake

By Faith Alone We’re Just And Ache

To Live For Him E’en Though They Hate

The Father’s Spirit Stills Our Shake

And Speaks Through Us Without Mistake

Some Of Us They’ll Kill And Take

But Christ Is Worthy What’s At Stake

The Glory Of Our King Awake

Endurance To The End Not Fake

Is Done By Faith Though Mountains Quake

Let’s Live And Die For His Name’s Sake!

That's my King!

Christ The Greatest Master Taught

Both Light And Heat He Always Brought

Yet They’d Malign With Lies Onslaught

And Call Him Devil – Wicked Thought

His Lost Sheep He Loves And Sought

For Them He Died And Rose And Bought

A People For His Own Who Ought

To Never Fear For He Has Wrought

Salvation, Now All Fears Are Nought

So Trust Him Now Don’t Be Distraught

Acknowledge Him, No Witness Halt

Our Father Rules The Birds, Exalt

His Name Who Counts Our Hairs And Fought

To Satisfy All Pleasures Sought

With He Himself Our God Who Taught!

That's my King! I wonder if you know Him today?!

Christ Jesus Came To Pierce, Divide

And Challenge Peace That’s Thin And Lied

When “Christ Is All!” Families Collide

Christ Must Be First By Margin Wide

We Love Him Most, In Him Abide

And Follow Him, Come Now Decide

Take Up Your Cross, He’ll Be Your Guide

The Spirit Leads, Cast Sin Aside

More Pleasures Pure God Will Provide

Receive Him Now, In Christ Confide

Give Little Ones True Love Applied

Great Love To Christ Has Been Denied

Friends Would Run And Foes Deride

They Mocked And Spit And Pierced His Side

For Christ Has Come And Lived And Died

He Bore The Wrath Of God And Cried

Then Rose Alive And Death Defied

To Save All Sinners Found Worldwide

Christ Alone Is Qualified

By Faith Flee To Him Rest And Hide

In His Righteousness Reside

Lose Your Life And Die To Pride

We Are His Pure And Spotless Bride

For He’s Our Joy Multiplied!

That's my King! That's my King!

The Bondage Of Guidance, By Mark Dever

Mark Dever writes: 

This will be brief. The way many Christians practice seeking God's will before they make a decision amounts to spiritual and emotional bondage. Christ has died to give us liberty and freedom (Rom. 6; Gal. 5; I Peter 2). We can only know the truth about God's will by what His Spirit reveals to us. He has revealed God's mind authoritatively in His Word. We should give ourselves to study what He has revealed. Personal reading, meditation, sermons, friends and books are all available to us to help us to better understand God's revealed will.

I do believe that God's Spirit will sometimes lead us subjectively. So, for instance, I am choosing to spend my life here on Capitol Hill because my wife & I sensed in 1993 that that is what God wanted us to do. However, I realized then (and now) that I could be wrong about that supposition. Scripture is NEVER wrong. I was free in 1993 to stay in England, or teach at a seminary, either of which would have been delightful opportunities. I understand that I was free to make those choices. But I chose, consulting Scripture, friends, wisdom, and my own subjective sense of the Lord's will, to come to DC. And even if I were wrong about that, I had (and have) that freedom in Christ to act in a way that is not sin. And I understand my pastoring here not to be sin. So I am free. Regardless of the sense of leading I had.

Most decisions I've made in my Christian life, I've made with no such sense of subjective leading. Maybe some would say that this is a mark of my spiritual immaturity. I understand this to be the way a redeemed child of God normally lives in this fallen world before the fullness of the Kingdom comes, Christ returns, and immediate, constant, unbroken fellowship with God is re-established.

A subjective sense of leading--when we've asked for it (as in James 1:5 we ask for wisdom) and when God freely gives it--is wonderful. The desire for such a subjective sense of leading, however, is too often, in contemporary evangelical piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting.

This post was originally on the Together For The Gospel Blog in 2008, but it is no longer available there. 

Christ The Greatest Master Taught!

 

God Embedded A Works Principle in the Mosaic Covenant

Geerhardus Vos commented on the republication of the covenant of works in the Mosaic law:

Everyone will have to agree that for Adam, perfect keeping of the law for a fixed period of time was the means to acquire eternal beatitude that cannot be lost. When the covenant of works was broken, God could have rescinded this promise. He was no longer bound to honor it. Nevertheless, He allowed the promise and the condition to stand and repeatedly be published anew, especially by the proclamation of the Sinaitic law (Lev 18:5, “The one who does them will live by them”; cf. Rom 10:5, “For Moses describes the righteousness that is by the law,” etc.; Gal 3:12). Fulfillment of this condition from man’s side was no longer conceivable; thus the repetition must have had a different significance. This significance can only be that after the fall God gave His covenant of grace, in which the same demand and promise are fulfilled in the Mediator." (Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012–16), 132.)

Charles Hodge wrote:

Besides this evangelical character which unquestionably belongs to the Mosaic covenant, it is presented in two other aspects in the Word of God. First, it was a national covenant with the Hebrew people. In this view the parties were God and the people of Israel; the promise was national security and prosperity; the condition was the obedience of the people as a nation to the Mosaic law; and the mediator was Moses. In this aspect it was a legal covenant. It said, “Do this and live.” Secondly, it contained, as does also the New Testament, a renewed proclamation of the original covenant of works. It is as true now as in the days of Adam, it always has been and always must be true, that rational creatures who perfectly obey the law of God are blessed in the enjoyment of his favour; and that those who sin are subject to his wrath and curse. Our Lord assured the young man who came to Him for instruction that if he kept the commandments he should live. (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872), 2.374–376.)

John Owen and Herman Witsius taught these same truths as Vos and Hodge. 

I believe the Westminster delegates, like Vos, Hodge, Owen, Witsius, and others taught that there was a works principle embedded in the Mosaic Covenant. In the Westminster Confession, these delegates cited Leviticus 18:5 from the Mosaic Covenant as a proof text for the covenant of works. That's pretty amazing to me. Moses' command for Israel to "do and live" and Paul's interpretation of that command in both Romans 10:5-6 and Galatians 3:12 is the Biblical warrant for a covenant of works in Eden and a works principle in the Mosaic Covenant. God embedded a kind of covenant of works in the law of Moses, and this highlights the power, beauty, majesty, and glory of the work of Jesus Christ!

Below I list 32 ways the law functioned for the Jews under the Mosaic Covenant. The law was given to Israel as a rule of life. But there was a big problem. Namely, God said He had not given Israel a heart to do the law:

Deuteronomy 5:29: Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!

Deuteronomy 29:4: But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.

Deuteronomy 31:26-29: Take this Book of the Law, and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there as a witness against you; for I know your rebellion and your stiff neck. If today, while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the LORD, then how much more after my death? Gather to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them. For I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.

Joshua 24:19: But Joshua said to the people, "You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins." 

The LORD told Israel they would fail to keep the law (Deuteronomy 30-32). The fact that Israel broke covenant with God and was exiled is a great proof of a works principle in the Mosaic Covenant. This will never happen to the Church. The Church will never be exiled! The Church will triumph through the blood of the Lamb as God saves all His elect from every tribe, tongue, and nation as a pure, spotless bride. And why? Because unlike Israel, who was a little story or paradigm of the first Adam (who also failed to do and live), Jesus – the second and true Adam, the only true and worthy Israelite Who ever lived – He came and He did and lives forevermore! He alone conquered sin, death, and Satan. He alone did the law perfectly whereas all others have failed. Therefore, He lives!

And by faith we can live in Him! So the primary function of the law for all the unregenerate Jews (which was most of them for most of Israel's history!) in the Mosaic Covenant was to drive them to Christ – and oh how gracious this was! Only with the ushering in of the New Covenant is the law fully established – as Paul says (Romans 3:31). Only now in the New Covenant era do we have the fullness of the Spirit and the Law written on the hearts of God's people in a manifest way. And we have all of this because our dear Savior did and lived for us. Oh what good news this is!

Now look how the law primarily functions in Paul’s writings: 

The law was . . . 

1. A ministry of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:9) 

2. A ministry of death (2 Corinthians 3:7; Romans 7:10) 

3. A ministry of killing (2 Corinthians 3:6; Romans 7:9) 

4. Giving a knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20; 7:7)

5. Bringing about wrath (Romans 4:15)

6. Reviving sin (Romans 7:9)

7. Making sin exceedingly sinful (Romans 7:13)

8. The strength of sin (1 Corinthians 15:56)

9. Making nothing perfect (Hebrews 7:19)

10. Not taking away sins (Hebrews 10:4)

11. Weak and unprofitable (Hebrews 7:18)

12. An inferior covenant, based on inferior promises (Hebrews 8:6) (Compared to the New Covenant)

13. At fault (Hebrews 8:7-8)

14. Not the way to inheritance (Galatians 3:18)

15. Not able to give life (Galatians 3:21)

16. Confining all under sin (Galatians 3:22)

17. A yoke not able to be borne by the Jewish Fathers, Peter, and the Apostles (Acts 15:10)

18. In direct contrast to New Covenant Faith (Romans 10:5-6; Galatians 3:12) 

19. Enabled the imputation of sin. It acted in a particular, specific way under the Adamic and Mosaic covenants that it did not act outside of those covenants (Romans 5:14)

20. Imprisoning sinners until faith came (Galatians 3:23)  

21. A school-master to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24) 

22. Not of faith (Galatians 3:12)

23. Promised life but brought death (Romans 7:10)

24. Was added because of transgressions (Galatians 3:19)

25. Was added to increase transgressions, and so sin abounded (Romans 5:20)

26. In its proper use, was not given for the just, but for the lawless (1 Timothy 1:8-11)

27. Contrasted with grace and faith (Romans 4:13-16; Romans 6:14)

28. Condemning Israel while the promise made to Abraham rescued them from destruction over and over again (Exodus 32:9-13; Leviticus 26:40-42; Deuteronomy 4:25-31, 9:4-5, 23-27; 2 Kings 13:1-26; and Micah 7:18-20)

29. Was broken by Israel. Therefore they were exiled for breaking covenant with God. This is in stark contrast to the New Covenant. The Church will not break the New Covenant, but will ultimately triumph through the blood of the Lamb as God gathers all His elect from every tongue, tribe, language and nation!

30. Whatever it says it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God (Romans 3:19)

31. Compared with the elementary principles of the world that held people under bondage (Galatians 4:1-11)

32. Held people under bondage (Galatians 4:25)

Only if we first meet the law face to face the way it is described above will we, through the law, die to the law so that we might live to God (Galatians 2:19), belong to Christ (Romans 7:4), and bear true, lasting, God-glorifying fruit for Him! Only then can we say with the Psalmist: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! . . . The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces" (Psalm 119:72, 103).

When Paul wrote about the law, the graciousness of the sacrificial system was not his focus. He focused primarily on the “do and live” aspect of the law, just like the LORD His God:

Jeremiah 7:21-23: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: 'Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.' 

And over and over again, God's people broke His law (the Mosaic legislation): they did not do and live, and appeal was made to the promises made to Abraham for mercy:

Failure to “do and live” – Exodus 32:9-10:  And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you." 

Mercy through the Abrahamic Covenant: Exodus 32:11-14: But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.'" And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. 

Mercy for sinners based on the Abrahamic Covenant: Leviticus 26:40-42: But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies- if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 

Stephen Dempster comments on this passage: Moreover, the book [Leviticus] concludes on a negative note with a list of blessings for obedience to the covenant and curses for disobedience. The curses (Lev. 26:14-39) far outweigh the blessings (Lev. 2:3-13). The imbalance indicates an expectation of covenant violation.  In addition, the last curse of exile (Lev. 26:33-39) proves to be the ultimate curse that Israel could experience. It is the death of the nation. Hope is held out for Israel in a foreign land, however, and that hope is grounded not in the Sinai covenant but in the Abrahamic covenant, which is repeated three times in one verse (Lev. 26:42). If the people confess their sins and have a change of heart, the covenant with the patriarchs will be remembered, and the end of the exile is implied. (Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, New Studies In Biblical Theology series, D. A. Carson (ed.), (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 104.)

Mercy from the failure to obey the Mosaic Covenant through the Abrahamic Covenant: Deuteronomy 4:25-31: When you father children and children's children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice. For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

Deuteronomy 9:5: Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 

Deuteronomy 9:23-27: And when the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, 'Go up and take possession of the land that I have given you,' then you rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God and did not believe him or obey his voice. You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you. "So I lay prostrate before the LORD for these forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you. And I prayed to the LORD, 'O Lord GOD, destroy not your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not regard the stubbornness of this people, or their wickedness or their sin . . . 

2 Kings 13:23: But the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor has he cast them from his presence until now. 

Micah 7:18-20: Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. 

Paul contrasted the “do and live” of the Mosaic law with New Covenant faith. Stephen Westerholm is very helpful on this point:

The point is both obvious and crucial that what Paul means by “law” in Galatians 3:10-14 [and Galatians 3:18 as well for our purposes] does not differ from other passages we have considered: the “law” refers not to the Pentateuch, but to the divine requirements imposed upon Israel at Mount Sinai and intended (need it be said?) to be done. But whereas in other passages it was regarded as self-evident that the law was to be done or kept, that it was not to be transgressed, here the axiom is made the basis for a fundamental claim about the nature of the law: since the basic principle of the law is that it requires deeds, it “does not rest on faith.” Faith and deeds (or faith and the law) are seen – in this context at least – as exclusive alternatives. (Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old And New On Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 304-305.)

I am indebted to Dr. Scott Clark, one of my professors at Westminster Seminary California, for most of the quotations in this post. For more information on this topic, please see: Resources On The Republication Of The Covenant Of Works

Christ Jesus Came For His Name's Sake!