Why is it wrong to murder? What’s immoral about infidelity or mistreating animals? Rape, racial discrimination? Where do we get any frame of reference for morality regarding these issues? Many outside the Church would decry those actions but...by what standard?
We find the only objective, absolute standard for morality in God’s Word alone. Any other line we point to lacks footing, it’s ever-shifting. We know these things are sin because the Law is written on our hearts (Romans 2:15) by a good and gracious God that we might see our need for Christ.
“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” —Romans 7:7-12
It is our hope that God would provide opportunities for the Gospel to be shared with this question. There is no Gospel without the Law. It shows us our sin and drives us to Christ. Give them the whole of two distinct parts, both the Good News of Christ Jesus that has the power to free from the inescapably necessary payment of sin and death on our behalf as well the Law that sets it up so beautifully. May they never be confused or conflated but always shared in tandem.
