“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgment. For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the best books on preaching I’ve read is Andy Stanley’s, Communicating for a Change. He thinks of his sermons in terms of movements. He aims to have five movements in each sermon. He labels them me, we, God, you, we. If the previous section had Paul in the “you” part of his message, he brings things around here back to “we.” Paul has been dumping truth on his audience. Here, just before the turn, Paul plants himself squarely in the midst of the rest of his readers. He was someone who was covered by the law too. And it was just as incapable of saving him as it was everyone else. In other words, rules can’t save us. Let’s talk about it.

Rules can’t save you. They can’t save me. They’ve never saved anybody. The rules we make for ourselves simply tell us where the lines are between righteousness and unrighteousness. This is the case whether we are using the lines God Himself has drawn, or the lines we’ve just made up for ourselves. Sometimes our lines take the form of one religion or another. Sometimes they take the form of government coercion. Sometimes we label them the results of evolution. That last one really is silly if you think about it because an unguided process has no way of imposing moral oughts on a people, but we’ll save that for another time.

Whichever set of rules we adopt for ourselves and for whatever reason, those rules can’t save us because having a set of rules doesn’t make us any more inclined to keep that set of rules. There are two things that can help keep us within the boundaries our set of rules define as moral norms. The first is personal virtue. Personal virtue – and collectively virtue, but personal virtue matters more – can help us stay comfortably within the boundaries of morality we have adopted. When we genuinely want to keep the rules, we’ll keep the rules. Of course, personal virtue isn’t a very common or consistent trait across the spectrum of humanity. Occasionally one culture or another seems to do better at encouraging it across its citizenry than others, but these are generally exceptions to the broader rule that we are not naturally a virtuous people. We never have been. Not since the beginning anyway. Even where virtue seems to flourish for a season (which is usually only because of a culture-wide adoption of a particular religious worldview, namely, Christianity), it doesn’t tend to last. Because we aren’t naturally virtuous.

The second thing that can help keep us within the boundaries of our rules is to make sure the consequences for violating those boundaries are exceedingly high – high enough to make the trouble of the consequence more inconvenient than not getting whatever it is we want that’s on the other side of the boundaries. If I know that getting what I want is going to result in a sufficiently negative consequence, I’m going to think twice about reaching for it. The trouble here, though, is that if I want what I want badly enough, there are not consequences that are going to dissuade me from pursuing it.

In other words, and again, rules don’t keep us in line. Rules can’t save us. They simply help us to see where the boundaries are for the relationship we want to be in. Having the rules and keeping the rules are two different things.

Paul was writing to and had been raised in a culture in which the rules were everything. The rules gave them purpose and meaning and substance. They always felt like they knew when they were right with God and when they weren’t. They knew who was right with God and who wasn’t. By having this external artifice, though, making everything thoughtless and automatic, they were given the cover they needed to gradually shift their focus from the relationship with God the rules were originally intended to map out for them so they could remain in it by faith to themselves. As long as they were broadly keeping the rules, they were good with God, so they could divert their attention to themselves and getting what they wanted. And, if they colored outside the lines a bit, they could always offer a sacrifice to pave their way back within the lines.

Because of this, their lives became one grand game of legalism. They ceased to know or understand or even really believe in what was right and true about God and the world, and just leaned on the rules…which they didn’t keep very well. The whole thing was a mess that was leaving them broken and lost. They needed a better way.

We need a better way too. If you are trying to live in a right relationship with the people around you and with whatever it is you give the place of God in your life by a set of rules, it’s not going to work. You’ll keep them in fits and starts, but not consistently. Because you can’t. None of us can. That’s what sin does in us.

Thankfully, there is a better way. That’s where Paul finally goes next. We’ll talk about that tomorrow.