Paul knew the happy God of the universe is not selfish with his joy. Never. His Trinitarian bliss expands outward as a gift to the creation, a gift to you and to me — the undeserving recipients of the happiness of God in his beloved Son. Our neighbors, right now out on their toys, who think of God as immaterial to life, have no idea the happiness they’ve turned their back on. So, we go forth to spread the gospel of our gloriously happy God.

As with any human endeavor, the great challenge is to find clear purpose. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Once you get clarity on the endgame, then you can really build a team and make forward progress. This is true of so many things in life, including God’s plan for the local church.

Epicenter of Love

So, the apostle Paul needs Timothy in Ephesus because the church there is young, unstable, and easily wavering from their purpose. That’s all laid out clearly in the early verses. In fact, the first chapter of 1 Timothy offers us one of the clearest texts in all the Bible to explain the week-after-week purpose of pastors and local churches:

The aim [the goal, the endgame] of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)

In a given city, the local church is an epicenter of love — love that springs from a purified heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. That means every gathering, every class, every sermon, every in-person meeting, every Zoom call, every YouTube live gathering, all our musical worship, all the times we’ve taken communion together, every program, counseling meeting, conference, retreat — all of it — aims at this result: to generate in this church a people who love because their hearts are being purified, their consciences are being cleansed, and their faith is becoming more stable and sincere.

Pulling off this glorious calling is the driving question of the Pastoral Epistles. To do it, churches come up with loads of bad ideas. And it’s the awkward calling of pastors to weed out bad ideas. And one bad idea has been put on the table in Ephesus. Someone in the church is saying, “I know how to accomplish this love! We should raise up, in the church, a team of teachers who are experts in the Mosaic law!” Paul facepalms, and then calls Pastor Timothy to remain in Ephesus to answer for the church this question: What’s the purpose of the law in the age of the gospel?

Law in a Gospel Age

That leads to today’s text, 1 Timothy 1:8–11:

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Rules for the Unrighteous

So, what is the role of the law in the age of the gospel? Paul helps us understand this in verses 8–9. The law is for the lawless. Right off the bat we see that the law is not for the just. That’s because the law cannot justify you or me or any sinner before God. In Christ, our standing before God is not defined by our own law-keeping, “for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4).

Then the law is bad! No, it’s not; the law is good — if we use it lawfully. The law remains relevant for the unrighteous. So, Paul outlines who qualifies as unrighteous in a series of three pairs. He says the law is for

• the lawless (law ignorers),
• the disobedient (law breakers),
• the ungodly (God ignorers),
• the sinners (God rejectors),
• the unholy (holiness ignorers),
• the profane (holiness profaners).

First, notice this is not the ceremonial use of the law. The ethical use is clearly in view in this text.

Second, Paul makes it clear that sin is not something we do; sin is something we are. Sin is deep in us. We are not sinners simply because we sin. We are essentially sinners; therefore, we sin.

So, if you break laws, actively reject God, and profane holy things, the law stands over you. The law binds law-breakers. I think we all understand this. Law-breakers, God-rejectors, and holiness-profaners — people who trample divine things — are worthy of God’s justice. More striking about this list is Paul’s equal focus on the wickedness of law-ignorers, God-ignorers, and holiness-ignorers. These are people who are not high-handed God-rejectors. They are God-ignorers. They, too, are under the law.

Sunday Funday in Phoenix

This strikes me because driving to church on a normal, beautiful Sunday morning in Phoenix, what do you see? You see lots of motorcycles. You see a lot of trucks with trailers full of toys. You see a lot of boats. You see a lot of RVs. You see a lot of ATVs. You see a lot of jet skis. In secular America, Sunday has become a playdate for adults with expensive toys. Now obviously, you can be a Christian and have fun on Sundays and go on vacations and boat and dune buggy. But I suspect a vast majority of people we see out early on Sunday mornings gassing up their toys are living under the assumption that God is materially irrelevant to their lives.

Paul wants us to pause, look around our own city, and see this dynamic playing out. You’re going to see a lot of otherwise nice people who live as if the law, God, and holiness are simply irrelevant to life. And here’s what Paul wants us to see: the law is for them — for them. If you ignore the law, the law binds you. To turn your back on God is cosmic sedition. Even refusing to thank God is high treason worthy of judgment. That’s Romans 1.

So, sinners get two options: you can live under the law, or you can live in Christ. All people in society belong to one of those two camps: under law or in Christ.

I could preach all morning against the law-ignorers, and holiness-ignorers, and the God-ignorers of our culture. But what would be the point? The law-ignorers, and holiness-ignorers, and the God-ignorers of our culture are jet-skiing across lakes and tearing around dusty mountains right now. That’s Paul’s point: the people bound under the law don’t congregate in this room on Sundays.

Vice List

To make this point even clearer, Paul launches into a vice list of sins we should never expect to find inside a local church. Verse 9: the law is also binding

• “for those who strike their fathers and mothers” — that is, for people who kill their parents;
• and more generally “for murderers”;
• and the law is also for “the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality” — fornication, adultery, and homosexual practices are all condemned by the law;
• and also “enslavers” — those who capture free people and deal them like animals.

That is condemned by the law. As Moses himself wrote in Exodus 21:16,

Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.

Period. Enslave a free man, and the law stands over you, condemning you. The law is meant to restrain cultural sin and to help protect society from widespread consequences and decades of fallout — like the long, sad effects we continue to experience in this country. God condemns enslavers. And few disgraces match the kidnapping of a free man to enslave him like a work animal, stealing away from him his most precious things in life: his home, his homeland, his possessions, his wife, his kids, and all his freedoms — millions of dollars of value all stolen away in order to profit another by a few thousand dollars. So, the law condemns enslavers. But the law is also for habitual

• liars;
• and specifically, over those who lie under oath: “perjurers”;
• and the law covers all sorts of things in this blanket statement: “and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

So, the moral law is blunt-force confrontation with blatant moral failures. The law is for the godless. The law calls out sin. The law imprisons God-ignorers and God-rejectors.

Judicial or Transformative?

Paul’s point is that the law is judicial, not transformative. The law confronts the sinner; it cannot convert the sinner. But we need both. Laws are good. But life-transforming influences are really good. So, you need laws. You need police. You need courtrooms. You need prisons. Those are all good — if handled wisely. But laws, police, judges, and prisons don’t transform hearts.

Parents of teens know this dynamic. The goal of parenting teens is to have a relationship with them in which you talk about life, and help them see wisdom and foolishness and make decisions on their own that are healthy. What a great joy that is to watch a teen mature in wisdom, to see the grace of God transforming them from the inside out.

And what heartbreak it is to see an obstinate teen who chooses foolishness after foolishness after foolishness. What do they need? They require more regulations, limits, clear curfews, clearly laid out consequences. That’s an exhausting and discouraging place to be as a parent, because there’s little transformation happening. You’re left resorting to law.

So, we need both forms of parenting, but the transformative relationship is far greater.

Law and Gospel Together

The law confronts what is “contrary to sound doctrine” (verse 10) and is “in accordance with the gospel” (verse 11). The law confronts sin. And sound doctrine confronts sin too. Both confront sin. Even if you are in Christ, your sin will be confronted. Our sins have to be confronted, or that love — that purpose we talked about earlier — will never happen.

So, the law does not contradict the gospel or sound doctrine. It doesn’t contradict the gospel, even if its work is judicial and not transformative. So, it is perfectly right for a Christian to affirm these four things:

1. Cops — stop pressing your knee into the neck of a handcuffed human made in the image of God.
2. Abortionists — stop dismantling the bodies of God’s image-bearers.
3. Kidnappers — stop enslaving image-bearers to use them for personal profit.
4. Everyone — come to Jesus Christ to find forgiveness and life transformation.

All four positions are consistent with “sound teaching.” So, we never want to pit the law and gospel as though the law is bad and the gospel is good. No.They work in tandem, but they accomplish different things.

So, what is the law good at? Paul explains a little more fully on the purpose of the law in Galatians 3:23–26:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

The law was a prison warden over us. The law imprisons us in our guilt for our sin until Christ could arrive to free us. That is true in redemptive history, and it’s true in the story of each believer. But, as John Piper says, “if the law has done its condemning and convicting work to bring you to Christ for justification and transformation, then it is not made for you anymore. . . . The main point here [in this text] is that the law has a convicting, condemning, restraining work to do for unrighteous people” (“How to Use the Law Lawfully”).

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