Transcript

Many folks have a negative association with law.

We like to be free and unencumbered by rules and regulations.

Oftentimes, we look at the dictates of law as somehow invasive or arbitrary.

We see them as limiting our free enjoyment of the goods of the Earth.

This exasperation is even more pronounced when it comes to the church's law.

Whenever the church speaks to the dignity of human life, or God's plan for human sexuality, or the truth about marriage, she is often painted as outdated, as constricting, as against human freedom.

But here's the thing, we need rules.

Try to imagine your favorite game, and then try to imagine it played without rules.

Take football.

Remove the referees, remove the rule books, remove everything pertaining to safety, the boundaries, take it all away, and then try to picture what a game of football would look like.

It'd be chaos.

For you see, we are inclined to the good, but after The Fall, we find it very difficult to sort out what that means and to achieve it.

Law is an ordination, that is to say an ordering or ordinance or determination of reason.

It's made for the common good and it's promulgated, that is to say it's made known by one who has care of the community.

What law does is it makes known to us what is good and encourages us to pursue it.

Now, we can distinguish different kinds of law at work in the world and in our lives.

Let's begin by considering the eternal law.

Picture an artist.

Before he paints, he has a sense of the goal.

He has a sense of the completed image.

Now picture God.

Before He paints the masterpiece of His creation and redemption, He has a notion of how He intends to draw all things to Himself.

That notion we refer to as the eternal law.

It's how God orchestrates all things to His glory.

Now, that eternal law actually registers in our lives in a particular way.

This we call natural law.

So, different creatures participate in the eternal law in a variety of ways.

We, men and women, have this law written within our hearts.

We actually experience it through the inclinations of our bodily and spiritual lives.

So, because we are set apart from the beasts by our intellect and will, that, that is what is most distinctly human, this is where we find it especially, in what constitutes the image of God at work within us.

And so the natural law is a kind of impress of the eternal law at work in our rational nature.

It's worked out through the deliberation of men throughout history.

We can come to clarify it and better understand it, and so legislate it.

One place we see this is in the general cross-cultural agreement regarding morality over the course of generations in a variety of places.

Most people come to a similar appreciation of what is good and what is bad.

The Ten Commandments are part of that law which is sown within our hearts.

But, as we'll see later, God reveals them to us in a special way for the sake of our own good.

Human law is just the concrete application or extension of the natural law in a particular time and place.

So for instance, in the United States, we drive on the right side of the road.

Now, is this part of the natural law?

Is this something written in the stars from all eternity, that wherever vehicles are conducted they need observe this thing?

No.

And we know that from the fact that in plenty of countries, it's perfectly legitimate, indeed legal, to drive on the left side of the road.

But, it is within the lawmaker's authority to govern on such things for public safety.

Men extend the natural law in order to accommodate all of the particular circumstances of a time and a place.

Now, what then is divine law?

Divine law refers to the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament and then to the new law of grace of the New Testament.

The Mosaic Law are just those precepts given to Israel to safeguard their life and worship.

So we encounter these lengthy codes in Exodus, in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy, and what they do is they legislate moral precepts, and ceremonial precepts, and judicial precepts.

They govern the life of the people of Israel for right order.

Now, some of those precepts are universal.

That is to say, they pertain to all times and places.

But some of them just pertain to Israel at this time and in this place.

So they're kind of limited in scope.

We also wanna say that the old law, the Mosaic Law, is pedagogical.

That is to say, it is leading to the fullness of Jesus Christ.

Now, the old law did not justify.

It did not yet make men good.

But, in the new law in Jesus Christ, which is the very grace of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, we have a law that truly justifies, one that actually makes men good.

The new law is the perfect fulfillment of the old law.

The Lord Himself has said that not one iota of the old law will pass away.

He has come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to perfect it .

is actual.

Now, He does set aside what was peculiar to the time and place of Israel that came before, and He inaugurates a truly perfect and universal law of love, one that embraces the whole of life, which legislates not only on exterior actions, but on interior motivations and intentions, one that goes from the tops of our head to the soles of our feet.

And in so doing, He gives us everything we need to love Him and our neighbor, and so to fulfill the law.

We pause just briefly to consider the Ten Commandments.

Here, we have an especially privileged communication of God's love to His people, Israel.

We said that we can discover the Ten Commandments by the natural law.

It's actually written within our hearts.

But because it is so important, the Lord clarified those things so that we would never need to question whether or not they were true.

The Ten Commandments are divided into two tables.

That is to say, two groupings.

The first three commandments concern our relation to God, and the final seven concern our relation to other men.

The Ten Commandments are also a good guide for identifying big sins in our life.

That is to say, mortal sins.

Mortal sins, like missing mass, for instance, kill the life of grace within.

They actually kill charity.

They're deadly.

They're lethal.

We distinguish them from venial sins.

Now, venial sins don't kill the life of grace.

They just impede it.

So if we were to liken the spiritual life to a car trip, for instance, mortal sins would be like getting in a wreck, whereas venial sins would be like taking the wrong exit, which detains us unnecessarily.

So we use these Ten Commandments as a helpful tool for making fruitful use of the sacrament of confession, to identify what keeps us from all the fullness of God, so that we can present that to the Lord and receive His healing love.

So as we take time to consider law, we find that it's not a drag or an imposition.

It's actually saving.

The law makes us virtuous, and it helps us to secure the common good, please God, and will lead us all the way to heaven.