Though the Law delegated to man an element of responsibility for man, the Law was not a system to be run by humans or to be usurped by human authority. The Law was the revelation of the person of God and was only right and good when He Himself was its point of reference and satisfaction. Only when it was used to understand Him was the written command seen accurately. In other words, the written document was never to be divorced from the living person and any understanding that was derived from doing so was false, or at least falsely founded. God defined His very Name itself, at the very giving of the Law itself, as “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (יְהוָ֣ה ׀ יְהוָ֔ה אֵ֥ל רַח֖וּם וְחַנּ֑וּן אֶ֥רֶךְ אַפַּ֖יִם וְרַב־חֶ֥סֶד וֶאֱמֶֽת ׀).[1] This was, then, the very nature upholding the entirety of the revelation of the Law. It was the actual explanation of the Law, its undergirding, the one and only cause producing the effect of the Law. Only a totally hardened heart could avoid seeing the grace of His person in every aleph and beth of the Law and the call to live in love to God and man because of and in light of His grace.
What we think of as the Law, such as the 10 commandments, is not the entire Law but an aspect of the Law, a specific application of it to human life. “The Law” begins with Genesis 1:1, not Exodus 20. Why, then, does Exodus 20 seem to take a more defining role in the term “law,” not only in modern thought but, at times, even in Scripture? Genesis 1:1 reveals God for who He is, the absolute and unchangeable Creator and Owner of everything. Exodus 20 simply applies this knowledge to human life. Exodus 20 moves Genesis 1:1 from an idea to a fact in man’s life, and it is when men realize that “God” is not just a distant idea but the actual One in whom they exist the One who owns them in absoluteness, the One to whom their whole life belongs by right, that even how they react in the secret of their thoughts to their neighbor’s belongings is a response to God Himself, then their wicked heart balks. But is it balking at Exodus 20 or at Genesis 1:1? Truly, it is balking at Genesis 1:1, of which Exodus 20 is an outworking. In other words, man can be happy to receive Genesis 1:1 as an idea but when it comes to truly receiving it, as Exodus 20 calls him to do, he finds that he does not and cannot in himself truly receive it, for Exodus 20 is Genesis 1:1 in daily life. And when applied to life, man finds an animosity arising within to oppose the person of God. He may deceive himself into thinking that he accepts God’s superiority over him, but God’s commandments move that mere idea into the realm of fact, and he finds the fact of God’s superiority is not acceptable to him even if the idea of it is. The fact of God’s existence and its true meaning comes to him through the specific statements that define right and wrong absolutely.
Thus, in order for man to agree with Genesis 1:1 or Exodus 20, his basic nature must be fundamentally transformed from one that holds intrinsic animosity toward God to one that replaces it with intrinsic agreement. This replacement comes through Jesus Christ by means of a human being placing his entire heart’s confidence in Him.
[1] Ex. 34:6 His Name means “I exist” but this—His existence—is defined by “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”
Biblical Return 