Guidelines for Good Living
Guidelines for Good Living by Rev. L. John Gable
January 24, 2021
What would you say is your attitude toward the law? The answer you give may depend largely on which side of the law you are standing. Generally we agree with the laws that tend to work in our favor and not so much those that don’t. We appreciate it when the bad guys get caught, but not so much when we look in the rear view mirror and see the blue flashing lights coming after us.
Today, as part of our extended sermon series on 50 Great Passages in Scripture, we are going to look at God’s giving of the Law, the Decalogue, the 10 Commandments, in Exodus chapter 20. Recall, this event comes after God’s gracious deliverance of the Children of Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. Grace always come before the Law. After 400 years under the heavy hand of Pharaoh Israel was being given its first taste of freedom. What would they do with it? How would they handle it? They were entering in to a world of violence and tribal conflict where might made right, where even the giving of the instruction “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, as barbaric as that may sound to us today, was a major step toward a more civilized society. This people called and delivered by Yahweh, the one true God, was now entering in to a world of polytheism, many gods – small g, each tribe with its own gods, handmade and carved out of wood or stone, each promoting their own benefits for success and fertility. How would God’s chosen people make their way in the world without becoming like the world they were entering in to? That is our question still today, isn’t it?
In our reading Moses went up on the mountain, in to the presence of God, on behalf of the people who were too frightened to go there themselves. The writer of Exodus describes the scene: “On the morning of the third day there was lightning and thunder, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled.” (19:16) And there God gave the Law to Moses to give to the people; for what reason? In order to shape and guide and form that people into being God’s people, a people designed for God’s purposes, a people chosen and set apart to live in a right relationship with God. In the midst of that awesome, horrifying theophany, God gifted His people with divine guidance for good living, and Moses told them as much when he said, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put fear (reverence, awe) upon you so that you do not sin.” The Law was given, not to condemn or confine, but to give the freedom to live in a right relationship with God.
Our faith tradition is based on laws, as is our nation, and without such laws to guide and instruct and restrain us our lesser angels prevail and we fall in to rebellion and anarchy, such as we witnessed in our nation’s capital just two weeks ago. You may remember reading the Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s story about a group of boys who find themselves stranded on a deserted island. One of the characters, Jack, is a symbol of all the forces of anarchy that seek to undermine and destroy society; while another, Ralph, stands for all the forces of law and order that try to keep society in control. Periodically, the boys have their council meetings and it was during one of those meetings that Ralph’s world seem to fall apart. Ralph turns to Jack and says, “But rules, you’re breaking the rules!” And Jack retorts, “Who cares?” Ralph doesn’t know what to say, so he scrambles for an answer. He summons his wits and stammers the only answer he can come up with, “But…but…but the rules are all we’ve got.” A civil society is based on rules, laws, agreed upon guidance, and as Joseph Sizoo rightly notes, “Walls always buckle when foundations crumble.”
This past Sunday afternoon I spent some time re-reading one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail, this one written to the white pastors of that community who were criticizing his presence and actions there. Knowing that we are going to talk about the giving of the Law this week I was struck by this section of Dr. King’s letter as he writes about the difference between “just and unjust” laws.
He writes, “One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
“Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
“Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”
Friends, the Laws that God gives to us are “just” laws, timeless and true and applicable for all people in every time and place. While we typically speak of our faith as being guided by grace and love (which it is), Jesus never denied or abandoned the importance of the Law. In His Sermon on the Mount He says, “I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it” (Matthew 5:17), and later when asked by an earnest but misguided young man what he must do to receive eternal life, Jesus answered, “Keep the Law” (Mark 10:19). So the Law has its place even for us who claim the freedom we find in Christ. The Law for us is God’s guidance for good living.
Too often we tend to think of laws, civil or spiritual, as designed and intended to keep us from doing what we really want to do and then punishing us when we do it. That negative view of the Law or laws was re-envisioned during the time of the Reformation when John Calvin introduced a third use of the Law: the first, that it like a mirror which exposes and convicts us of our sin; the second, that it restrains our unjust behavior by fear of punishment, both negative understandings of the Law; but the Calvin introduces a third use of the Law, that it is a guide for Christian living, a means to help us live in right relationship with God and neighbor and demonstrate the Kingdom of God to the world. This understanding of the Law is not based on fear or punishment, but on our desire to “do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God” as the prophet Micah instructs us.
I may really want to drive 60 miles an hour up Meridian Street, swerving between lanes, in and out traffic, and unfortunately some actually do. 35 miles per hour? Stay within the lines? Stop at red lights, really? But we know those very laws which restrain us are designed and intended to protect us and to protect others from us! Staying within the limits and in our lanes are laws designed for our benefit, individually and collectively, and we disobey them at our own peril.
Have you ever noticed where guardrails are placed on the highway? They don’t extend the whole length of the highway but are only in those places where leaving the pavement would cause the most harm to the passengers in a car, such as hitting a bridge abutment or careening in to creek. Those guardrails, those lines on the road, those speed limit signs are all intended not to restrict or restrain us but for our benefit and protection, as are the Laws given to us by God in the 10 Commandments. And as one has noted, “We don’t break the 10 Commandments, we break ourselves against them.” These are God’s guidelines for good living.
Imagine how much better, kinder, gentler, safer, easier life would be for all of us, not just for some of us, but for all of us if we lived with in the guidance of the Law:
Loving God and Him alone
Rejecting any form of idolatry: human or handmade
Using God’s name only as it should be used with holy reverence
Remembering the Sabbath day, setting it apart from all others for God and God’s purposes of worship and rest
Honoring our mothers and fathers, and respecting all people as bearers of the image of God.
Imagine life as it would be if we did not murder or kill. Did not commit adultery. Did not steal. If we spoke the truth in all matters and did not bear false witness against another. If we did not covet or want for anything that belonged to our neighbors.
Can we imagine such a world, such a way of living? God can and has and so has given us this good guidance as to how to live in such a way, in His way. That is the blessed life the Psalmist speaks of in the first Psalm: “Blessed are those whose delight is in the Law of the Lord.”
God has given us these Laws, not simply as rules and regulations to be followed and obeyed, but as guidelines for how we can live in right relationship with Him and one another. Our intention then in obeying these Laws and applying them to the living our lives is not simply to avoid judgement or punishment (a negative understanding of the Law) but as the means to “love God with all that we are and our neighbors as ourselves”, which is the way Jesus summarized the Law.
When I was a child I knew my parents’ love for me which was consistent and unconditional (for that I am forever grateful). So I never really had to live in fear of their punishment, even when I did something wrong; what I did live in dread of though was their disappointment in me. I didn’t have to fear a spanking or a grounding as much as I did that look of disappointment which said to me that I had stepped over the line and what I had done had somehow damaged my right relationship with them, at least in that instance, and, in my case, that was pretty much sufficient to keep me in line, and as a result I got to enjoy a lot of freedom growing up. Perhaps even without their awareness they were guiding me by the third use of the Law, using their rules and regulations, even their looks of disappointment, as a guardrail and guidance for my blessing and benefit.
Let me close with this thought. There are two problems with the Law, if it is right to even say it that way. The first is that we have come to focus on them as being rules and regulations to be followed and obeyed out of fear of judgement or punishment rather than being the means to help us establish and maintain a right relationship with God and one another. It would be helpful for us to refocus on the relationship aspect of the Law rather than simple its “do’s and don’ts”.
And the second problem with the Law is, no matter how well intended we are to follow it, we will always fall short its standards, we will always cross the line and step out of bounds, thus threatening our right relationship with God and one another. As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But here is the Good News in that: that inherent human problem of our always falling short of the glory of God invariably throws us back on the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, the One in whom the Law has been fulfilled, the One who leads us in the way of God’s guidance for good living.