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Have you ever experienced confusion over God’s love and His law?
How do you understand the relationship between His law and love?
Do parents who love their children impose rules on them, the law of the home, rules like bedtime, brushing teeth, no playing until homework is done, no dessert before dinner, and no playing in the street?
If the child breaks one of these rules, and if the parent loves the child, what will the parent do?
Will the parent impose a penalty, some artificial punishment? But for what purpose? Is the punishment intended, in this context, as law enforcement—the child broke a rule and the law requires enforcement? Or is the punishment imposed in love as discipline—i.e., to teach?
If it is discipline, then it is not punitive punishment—exacting vengeance for law-breaking or inflicting legal payments that the law demands—but, instead, it is done to educate and to protect.
And why do the parents do this? What happens to the child if the parent does not do this? Does harm come to the child if the parent does not impose rules like teeth brushing, eating restrictions, bedtimes, and not playing in the street? From where does the harm come if the parents’ rules are not imposed and not enforced? From the breaking of the design laws that life is built to operate upon! These design laws are God’s laws, the laws of life, the laws of reality itself. However, loving parents will create made-up rules with artificially enforced consequences to protect and teach their children—but always with the goal of the child maturing, growing up, and internalizing the reality, the design law, into their heart, mind, and understanding—so that, one day, they will choose on their own accord to live healthy lives in harmony with the laws of life.
What if a child does break one of the parents’ rules, like no playing in the street, with the known imposed punishment for doing so being a spanking, but, instead, the child is hit by a car and sustains multiple broken bones—does the parent, in order to be lawful, in order to be just, get out their belt and beat the child while they lay injured in the street? Why not?
What about God? If we break His commandments, does God’s law and justice require Him to use His power to inflict punishment, or does transgression of God’s laws naturally cause the harm, pain, suffering, and ultimately death unless healed by God?
If the child has been hit by a car after disobeying their parents’ rule, what is the loving action for the parent to take if the child’s disobedience resulted in their getting injured? What is the just and right action for the parent to take? Why is it both loving and also just for the parent to do everything in their power to heal the damage rather than seek to inflict punishment?
Is the parent legally allowed to do everything to heal and save their child if their child’s injuries are from the child’s disobedience? Or does the law require someone to be punished in the child’s place before the parent can help their injured child? While a loving parent would never think of beating their child who has been hit by a car, does the law require that the father get a legal substitute, perhaps the injured child’s brother, and spank that child in place of the injured child and, only then, once the law has been satisfied, is the father able to heal and save the injured child?
What about God? Is He lawful in seeking to save and heal sinners directly, or is He restricted in His ability to save and heal sinners until someone pays Him the legal penalty that the law requires?
And what if that car collision resulted in the child having both kidneys destroyed, and they are going to die of renal failure unless they receive a kidney transplant? What is the loving action for the parent to take? Donate a kidney! What is the just and right action for the parent to take to save the child from the result of their disobedience—donate a kidney, use power to kill the disobedient child, or let the child die from the result of their choice?
Is it lawful to donate the kidney? What law demands that a healthy kidney be supplied or else the child will die? And if the parent does do the right and just action of donating a kidney to save their child, could we say that the parent “paid a high price to save their child”? Was that a legal price or simply the price of reality, what the laws of life and health require for the child to live?
In this entire scenario, is love involved? Is law involved? And are there two types of law involved, the design laws of love, of physics and health, and the parents’ imposed laws? Are the parents’ imposed laws, in this scenario, evidence of love?
Does this give insight into God’s love and law and His use of added laws through the Bible?
What happens to a child if they don’t understand the reason the parent had rules in the home—if a child believes there is nothing wrong with not brushing teeth except that the parents will get mad and punish? If that is what a person always believes and they never learn the truth about tooth decay, what would happen as they grow up?
Will they come to appreciate, love, and trust their parents for protecting them from harm when they were unable to protect themselves—or will they come to resent the parent as a control freak, come to distrust the parent as one who demands people do what they say or they will punish; will they misconstrue love as conditional, acceptance is only for good performance, and will this misunderstanding lead to rebellion and distancing themselves from their parents? This is what happens when we teach that God’s laws are imposed laws that require Him to use power to inflict punishment for sin.
Instead, God uses power to heal and save people from what sin naturally does. Sin naturally harms, injures, severs our connection with God, sears the conscience, warps the character, hardens the heart, and results in death unless God uses power to hold at bay its consequence and then intervenes with Jesus to eliminate the infection of sin and restore humanity to health, to being right, to righteousness.
If you would like to learn more about how God, through Jesus, heals us from the damage of sin, check out our blogs Salvation and the Cleansing of Our Spirit, Part 1 and Part 2.
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