The Lawful Use Of The Law

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables or endless genealogies... Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith... But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law was not made for the righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners... according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. (1 Timothy 1:3-11)

There is a right way and a wrong way to handle the good law of God—and the difference changes everything.

Paul's Arrest and the Setting of the Letter

In the late spring or early summer of AD 58, the Apostle Paul was in Jerusalem. As he entered the temple, a mob of Jewish zealots seized him, dragged him outside, and began to beat him. I'm sure Paul had a kind of déjà vu in that moment, because two decades earlier this same man—then named Saul—had stood on the other side, overseeing and consenting to the martyrdom of Stephen, a follower of Jesus.

Now the tables had turned. The former persecutor of Christians had become a preacher of Jesus. Word reached the Roman authorities, and the centurion over the garrison ran down, pushed through the mob, and carried Paul into the Roman barracks under arrest. They assumed he was a certain Egyptian troublemaker, but Paul addressed the centurion in Greek and identified himself. Wherever Paul went there was either a revival or a riot, and this time it was a riot.

When the Romans prepared to beat him, Paul asked whether it was lawful to scourge a Roman citizen—and it wasn't. That event began a six-year period of trials before kings, judges, and magistrates, with Paul finally appealing to Caesar and being extradited to Rome for house arrest.

Charging Timothy at Ephesus

After his release—between what we call Paul's first and second imprisonments—Paul traveled with Timothy, one of his closest co-laborers, back to churches they had planted. One of these was Ephesus, a church near and dear to Paul's heart. He hadn't been there for almost ten years, and when they arrived they found a church full of conflict, issues, and problems, like every church has.

Knowing he had to return to Rome to stand trial, Paul told Timothy to remain in Ephesus and charge the people that they teach no other doctrine. Timothy, probably in his early thirties, was a bit timid and fearful about this commission—handed a messy church and told to fix it. After Paul left for Macedonia, he wrote this letter to encourage and instruct his young friend on how to lead.

The Law Is Good If Used Lawfully

We pick it up in verse 8: "But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully." Why does Paul say this? Because some in Ephesus were teaching wrong doctrine. Verse 7 tells us they desired to be teachers of the law—a good desire, for later Paul says he who desires the office of overseer desires a good thing. They had the right desire but went about it the wrong way.

Wrong preaching and teaching produces controversial speculation and meaningless disputes; it does not bring godly edification. Pastors, teachers, evangelists, and prophets are given for the equipping of the saints and the building up of the body of Christ. That is what God has commissioned us to do—to raise you up to do the work of the ministry. But bad teaching simply produces a church full of debaters and disputers, and that's exactly what they found at Ephesus.

Point one: false teachers and false teaching are known by their fruit. This is exactly what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7—you will know them by their fruit. Disputes, controversy, and a church that isn't built up are the bad fruits of false teaching. Jesus also said wisdom is justified by her children—you know what is good by what is bred forth from it. And in that same passage He said men will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. That is our hope: that people will see the good fruit of our lives and recognize it as a God thing.

The Same Book, Different Outcomes

This is so important because the false teachers at Ephesus had the same source material Paul and Timothy had. They had the law, some of the prophets, and likely some apostolic writings already codified—Ephesians, and probably the Gospel of Luke (Luke lived right across the Aegean Sea), and possibly Mark. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3 that Paul's writings were already considered Scripture. They had the same material, yet the outcome was disputes and controversy rather than godly edification.

This is still true today. We can have the same sixty-six books, written by forty authors on three continents in three languages over fifteen hundred years, and yet it can be taught in a way that sounds completely different from church to church. This is behind one of the biggest objections people raise against Christianity: "Look at all the atrocities Christians have done over the last two thousand years—how could you believe that book?"

Honestly, that's a valid criticism. History does show terrible things done by not-so-good people who claimed this book as their reasoning. But often it's a red herring—a distraction from the real point when someone is being convicted of their own need before God. It's also low-hanging fruit, because if you dug into anyone's family tree you'd find a deplorable ancestor, and we don't judge people by that.

Bad Teaching Leads to Bad Consequences

Point two: bad teaching can lead to really bad consequences—both temporal and eternal. The Bible taught improperly can cause people to do bad things now and to believe bad things that have eternal consequences. If people never hear the truth about salvation in Jesus Christ, their eternal destiny hangs in the balance.

From these very pages some have oppressed, enslaved, promulgated racism, condemned others, and waged wars—because teaching was off a degree or two at the start, and a couple hundred miles out from that degree you have a disaster. Yet from the same blessed book, groups have been emancipated, minorities freed, and orphanages, hospitals, universities, and charities founded. How do you get such opposite outcomes from the same book? It has nothing to do with the book and everything to do with the teaching.

Almost everything in this world can be used for good or for bad—fire, sex, atomic energy. The same is true of the Scriptures, which is why we must be so careful to use them rightly. Circle that word if in verse 8: "the law is good if one uses it lawfully." We know this innately, because Genesis tells us we were created in God's image. Since God is just, holy, and good, He has imprinted in us the sense that the law is good if used lawfully—we want things done right.

What the Good Law Is For

Now, some stumble at the idea that the law is good, because there are some genuinely silly laws on the books—in Illinois you can't do "fancy bike riding," in Connecticut pickles are required to bounce, in Georgia you can't eat fried chicken with utensils, and right here in California it's illegal for animals to mate within 1500 feet of a place of worship. But Paul isn't talking about those laws. He's talking about the law of God, the law of Scripture.

Point three: good teachers use the good law in a good way to produce good outcomes. That raises three questions: What is the bad way? What is the good way? And what is the good outcome?

Verse 9 says, "knowing this: that the law was not made for a righteous person." You cannot use the law correctly unless you know two things: God did not give His law for good people, and He did not give His law to make people good. If you miss this, you will preach the good law in a bad way.

How? Maybe you've stepped into a church that made clear, by the way it handled Scripture, that you weren't good enough to be there—you had to reach a certain level, or get your life in order, before you could belong. Many people's objection to Christianity is exactly that: "I can't go there, I'm not good enough." Some of you were fearful the very first time you came, thinking, that's where all the holy people are. But spend five minutes here and you discover this is a place for unrighteous people. We all come in totally unrighteous, unworthy to stand before the King of kings.

Don't Preach Bad Law by Your Fake Good Life

Point four: don't preach bad law by your fake good life. It isn't only the pulpit that gives forth bad teaching. Your life may be the only encounter with Christ that some people ever have. How many Christians have lived in a holier-than-thou way that made coworkers, neighbors, and family feel they weren't good enough? How many have said, in effect, "my kids can't be around your kids," or "you can't come to my place on the holidays"? How many non-Christians find that the obstacle to church is the "righteous" Christians who aren't really righteous at all?

That's Pharisaism, and we can stumble into it accidentally. Paul himself, before his conversion, was Saul the Pharisee, who said in Philippians 3 that according to the law he was blameless. Pharisees avoided contact with the unholy, even refusing to share a meal or let a Gentile's shadow touch them, lest they be made unclean. Yet what did they call Jesus? A friend of sinners. That's what the religious people despised about Him.

Do you have any sinful friends? Jesus did. A Barna research study found that within twenty-four months of becoming a follower of Jesus, the vast majority of people had no more non-Christian friends—not because those friends got saved, but because they got new friends and stopped associating with anyone unholy. That's frightening, and it ought not be the case.

The Law Brings Conviction

Verse 9 continues: the law was made "for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane," and so on. The law was made for sinners—not to make them righteous, but to make them painfully aware of their sinfulness and acutely aware of their need.

Romans 3:20 says, "by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight... for by the law is the knowledge of sin." You cannot make yourself right before God by your good works. Romans 7:7 adds, "I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'" We all covet—you did this past week, especially after Apple's latest event, with people sending you messages saying "you're going to buy that." We'd never know it was wrong unless the Bible said so. And you can't plead ignorance. I once rode a jet ski in the surf off Point Loma not knowing it was illegal—the red boat with the blue light didn't care that I didn't know. I paid a big fine. The law doesn't accept "I didn't know."

Point five: the law properly presented produces conviction of sin. Romans 3:19 says whatever the law says, it says "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." The law reveals our guilt before a holy God and readies us for the remedy. Galatians 3:24 says, "the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." Romans 3:20 says the law justifies no one; Galatians 3:24 says the law points us to Jesus so we can be justified by faith. That's gospel—good news.

Conviction Is for Us, Not Just Others

We don't like conviction—or rather, we love conviction for other people. When you're being convicted at church you think, "I hope my husband's hearing this," or you fire off the sermon link to your brother. Your sin looks really bad on other people. But James says the law is like a mirror, the perfect law of liberty, in which you see what kind of person you are.

A mirror has no power to fix you; it only exposes. But the Word of God is living and powerful—it cuts deep, transforms, and directs us to the One who can transform us. Verse 11 says the law was made for the unrighteous "according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God." The law properly presented produces conviction of sin, pointing us to the saving, glorious gospel of our sin-bearing Savior, Jesus Christ.

A Stumbling Block, and a Greater Grace

This passage is a stumbling block for our culture, because it contains words now considered politically incorrect—it names sexual immorality and the practice of homosexuality as sin. Our culture says these are common and acceptable; the Bible calls the practice of them sin, and since the Bible brings conviction, people resist it: "How dare you say that's wrong—I need a safe space."

But yes, it is wrong to practice immorality, whether heterosexual or homosexual. You are completely free to do these things, because God has made you a free moral agent—but you can't practice them and go to heaven. You can't have it both ways. First Corinthians 6:9-10 says the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God—not fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, sodomites, thieves, the covetous, drunkards, revilers, or extortioners. The list could go on. That is the bad news of the law.

But here is the awesome grace of Jesus Christ. The very next verse says, "and such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." That's gospel. Some of you identify with the things on that list—and I want you to know there's forgiving grace. That was your past; it can never be your future as a practice. And if you fall, "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Christ Came to Save Sinners

That brings us to verse 15: "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and every one of us was lost. The law shines a bright light on us and shows just how blind, lost, and far from God we are—but it doesn't leave us there, because Jesus says, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The Bible is all about redemption, and we love redemption stories—they're the biggest box-office hits of all time. He is a Redeemer who comes to seek and save the lost. The law taught the right way leads to this good outcome: the saving power of Jesus. The law taught the wrong way only looks at sinful people and says, "You're condemned." Unfortunately, many lost people think that's all Christianity is. But we want to reach out and say, "Come with me—I want you to meet Jesus. He loves you in spite of your sin, and He wants to redeem you from it and save you."

Closing Prayer

Father God, I thank You that You sent Your Son into the world to save us. We need Your saving power. Every one of us standing here is a total, abject failure, and we need Your grace. We thank You for Your forgiveness and Your goodness. We pray, Jesus, that You would continue that work of transformation and sanctification in each of us, making us more like You, so that people would see our good works and glorify You. And, Father, may it never be that our lives, in a self-righteous way, condemn others. Help us to walk in humility and grace, and to give forth the same grace You have freely given to us.

Maybe even now, as we stand in an attitude of prayer, you can identify with some of the things listed here as being against God. You realize you've sinned, you've gone against God's standards, and you've been convicted by the law. That's the purpose of the law—but it's to point you to Jesus. He came to save you and rescue you. If you'd like to receive His forgiving grace, it's as easy as A-B-C: admit you're a sinner, believe that Christ died for your sins, and come to Jesus confessing your sins.

Pray with me: Dear Jesus, I admit I need You. I've tried to clean myself up and I can't do it. Would You come into my life, forgive me of my sin, and help me to follow You by faith. Amen.