Unlawful Teachers of the Law

But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

The average doctor has to study eight years to qualify, and several more to specialise. To qualify as a lawyer, it also takes around seven years. Engineers take between four and five years, chartered accountants between five and seven years. In our world, if someone is going to deal with the human body, with our highly complex legal and financial systems, with designing our roads, bridges and aeroplanes, we expect them to be rigorously educated and trained.

How strange then, when it comes to dealing with the human soul, that part of us which will endure forever, that we don’t find an equivalent rigor and scrupulousness. Pastors and preachers deal with the only part of a human that is immortal, but very few see the importance of scrupulous, rigorous training. Certainly, I understand that unbelievers don’t see value in the ministry at all, since they do not see much of anything beyond this world. But the sad thing is to see Christians who believe a sincere heart, an above average knowledge of the Bible, and a love for people ought to suffice.

Some even frown upon the idea of training pastors, and think it is all rather unspiritual. When they hear that our seminary trains men for four years, they are shocked. My own formal training took eleven. They think this is complete overkill, and the feeding of pride.

And certainly it can be, and there is always that danger. But why is it that we are completely fine with our doctors training for eight years, but think our pastors should get a year of Bible school and be done with it? Which profession is dealing with a more crucial part of the human being?

Paul did not treat the training of his men haphazardly. As we’ve seen, he mentored Timothy for twelve years before letting him pastor and finish planting this church at Ephesus. Paul wanted skilled pastors, or as he will call them in 2 Timothy 2:15, approved workmen, who don’t need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

But then, as now, there are plenty of cranks and fly-by-nights who get into the pulpit, or now, onto the Internet, and get a following. The way you identify them is how they mess up the doctrines of the Word when they get into the pulpit. Like a fellow who once had success cutting the Christmas turkey who arrives in the operating theatre feeling qualified, he is sure to do some damage, so these men use the Bible badly.

Ephesus had these men. We saw them in verse 7: “desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.”

Since this is the section where Paul is telling Timothy to set the doctrine of the church straight, he is here going to remind Timothy of the right use of the Word, and the wrong use of the Word. Instead of mishandling the Bible like they do, Timothy, you keep being a skilled interpreter of God’s Word.

Today we’ll see a small section of Paul’s class on Bible interpretation, on preaching and even on theology. He’ll give us three principles of Bible interpretation. But this is not just for Timothy, and not just for pastors. This affects how you use the Bible, how you read it, how you understand the different sections. It should help us value the importance of rightly interpreting Scripture.

I. All of Scripture Is Useful

But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully

The first thing Paul reminds us is that there is nothing wrong with the Bible, which contains the Law. The Law is a tool within the toolbox of the Bible. When a workman drills a hole where he shouldn’t, it is not fault of the drill. If a surgeon cuts a vital nerve, it is not fault of the scalpel. And so it is not fault of the Bible, when a teacher uses it wrongly.

If you use it lawfully, correctly, appropriately, its inherent goodness and usefulness and fittingness will be found. If you use screwdrivers for screws, hammers for nails, wrenches for bolts and nuts, you will find they are good. But if you use a hammer to cut wood, and a plier to make holes in the wall, and a saw to hammer in nails, you will find they don’t seem to be good. They create a mess, and destroy more than they fix.

The Bible is like an assorted toolbox. There are many different kinds of tools in it, and each does something different. There are the psalms, to praise God and give hope and comfort, and faith. There are the wisdom books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes to guide us, and give us sound thinking about life. There are the prophets, God’s covenant policeman, giving God’s warnings and promises to a disobedient nation. There are the narratives that explain the grand story of God’s glory, from Creation to Fall, to the Covenant With Israel through Abraham all the way to Messiah’s coming in the Gospels and the book of Acts. There are the letters to the churches, explaining new covenant doctrine and new covenant living now as the church. There is apocalyptic, like Daniel and Zechariah and Revelation, explaining how all things will be brought to a consummation.

But unless you use the wisdom literature for what it was meant for, or the Gospels for what they were meant for, or the narratives for what they were meant for, you won’t have a happy result. That’s what false teachers, and sometimes merely bad teachers do. They take a psalm, meant to give expression to your worship, and they try to turn it into a law code. They take a narrative, and they try to turn it into an apocalyptic allegory for something else. They use a part of the excellent Bible in a way it was not meant to be used, and the result is not good.

Perhaps the greatest abuse of one part of the Bible is what Paul mentions here: the Law.

What is the Law? Strictly speaking, the Law is the code of commandments given to Israel at Mount Sinai that became the covenant between God and Israel. The Ten Commandments captures it, but then it extends out into a few hundred commands that cover everything from eating to farming to personal hygiene to building your house, to ritual worship, to taxation to law courts.

From Exodus to Numbers, these commands are spelt out, and then repeated in Deuteronomy.

A little more broadly, the Law is the entire first five books of the Bible, the books written by Moses, the Torah, the Pentateuch. In its broadest form, the law is every command given by God that we must keep.

Now think about how many people view that section of the Bible. They think there was something very wrong with it. Some think it was cruel and primitive. Some think it is almost an earlier draft of what God meant to do, and now that we have the New Testament, we can draw a red line through all of it.

But here Paul tells us that the Law is good. The Law is good when used properly. This is not the only place he says this.

• Romans 7:12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
• Romans 7:16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
• Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. (Galatians 3:21)
• Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;

All of the Bible is good. In 2 Timothy, Paul is going to say in 3:16–17:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

But now Paul is going to show us where it goes wrong.

II. The Law in Scripture Can Be Abused

knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person

Here Paul tells us how the tool is misused, how it malfunctions. The Law does not exist for the righteous person. What does Paul mean? To make a person righteous, or to keep an already righteous person righteous, the Law is the wrong tool. That’s what these teachers in Ephesus were doing: misusing, misapplying, misinterpreting this important part of Scripture: the law.

Let’s put this word righteous in everyday terms. Are you a good person? Most people today will say they are good people. Most people today will say they are on the side of right, and when they die, they will go to the place reserved for good people.

Paul says, if you want to be one of those good people, the Law is not the part of the Bible that will make you that way, and keep you that way. As we’ll see in a moment, the Law tells you what ought to be, and how you fall short, but it doesn’t get you there, it doesn’t clean you, change you, or help you. It can diagnose your disease, but it is not medicine.

In Romans, Paul puts it this way:

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20)

The Law as a tool, as an instrument, has a very important function. But it cannot do what it was never designed to do. It was never designed to clean you up and keep you clean.

You cannot use a mirror to wash yourself. Try as you might, a piece of glass will not clean you. You cannot use a sign post to transport you to your destination. A sign shows you the way, but it cannot get you there. You cannot use your report card from school to improve your mind or grow your intelligence. Your marks simply tell you where you already are, but those grades don’t educate you.

And this is a serious error, because it undermines the very gospel:

I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” (Galatians 2:21)

But one of the very first things that false teachers or incompetent teachers do, is to try to use the law to make or keep people righteous. This comes is many forms.

One form is to teach the actual commands of Moses, whether it be Sabbath-keeping, or not eating pork, or some selective section of the Law of Moses that becomes mandatory. If the person says you have to do this to be saved, as some say about keeping the Saturday sabbath, then you are actually denying the gospel. If the person says that if you keep these dietary laws, or these ritual purity laws, or observe these days, you will be especially blessed, as you get in some forms of theonomy, and Christian reconstructionism, and various branches of the Messianic or Hebrew roots movement, then you have a kind of sanctification legalism.

A second form is to focus on the Ten Commandments, or maybe another set of commandments, and hope that by continually teaching them, that it will cause people to clean up their act, and get more righteous. So we hammer away at the Ten Commandments as the great foundation of everything, calling on everyone to conform to this standard.

A third form is to focus on commandments, be they Old or New Testament, and to keep before everyone the duties, the demands, the disciplines of a holy life, to major on the standards, the rules, the practices, with very little or no mention of the promises, the enablements, the grace, the motivation, the love, the empowerment. You just major on imperatives, what everyone must do.

Now you might think that teachers like this would be unpopular, but you would be wrong. So-called teachers of the Law will always have a huge following. Why? As Warren Wiersbe said “The flesh (our old nature) loves religious legalism because rules and regulations enable a person to appear holy without really having to change his heart.”

In truth, people love this kind of abuse of the law for the very same reason they love man-made religion. We like to have a measurable code, a list of rules which we’re able to keep, a set of keepable standards. Some like it more challenging, some like it less, but everyone likes it set down, keepable and controllable. This is what you have to study for the exam, this is the pass-mark, do it.

We love that stuff. I don’t have to pray, confess, trust, depend. I don’t have to exercise faith and dependence, I don’t have to wait on God, or do what seems impossible by grace. I can do it, and then I will get righteousness in return.

This is why legalism and religion will always be popular. They appeal to the very same temptation in the Garden – eat the fruit, and get the knowledge of good and evil for yourselves. That is, put the whole question of your own good and evil under your own control. Be the master of it, determine it, decide it, earn it.

Bad teaching doesn’t always mean unpopular teaching. Indeed, Paul wouldn’t be telling Timothy this if these aspiring teachers of the Law weren’t already having some success in Ephesus. The damage done by using this tool in the wrong way is not the damage of small crowds or no one listening to the sermons. The damage is the damage done to souls: people living under burdens of guilt, people who give up and forsake Christianity, people who live in under a hardened exoskeleton of pride in their self-righteousness, people who become pharisaically proud and critical of all other Christians, people missing grace because they are leaning on their own righteousness.

Timothy knows this, but Paul needs to remind him of how this particular tool in the toolbox is supposed to be used.

1 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 2, p. 211). Victor Books.

III. The Law in Scripture Can Be Skilfully Used

but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

Now what follows is a list of fourteen kinds of sinners. The list actually corresponds loosely to the Ten Commandments.

The first pair crowns the list: people who are a law unto themselves and live insubordinate lives. The law is for those in rebellion.

The second pair is for those who break the first and second commandments to have no other God before God and to make no graven images. The ungodly, i.e. the irreverent, impious, without any devotion or worship, and sinners.

The third pair is for those who break the third and fourth command not to take God’s name in vain or violate His day: the unholy and the profane. People who take holy things, holy ideas, holy concepts and times and places and treat them as common.

The fourth pair is for those who break the fifth commandment: to honour father and mother. Murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers. People who actually take the life of their parents, and by implication, people who hate their parents.

The next word is for those who break the sixth commandment: you shall not murder. Murderers, manslayers.

The next two words describe those who break the seventh commandment: You shall not commit adultery. Fornicators, which refers to anyone breaking God’s code of sex only within marriage. Sodomites. This is unambiguously a Greek word that meant people who slept with people of their own sex.

The eighth of the Ten Commandments says, “You shall not steal” and the next kind of sinner recorded is kidnappers. This refers to people who would steal human beings for the slave trade, perhaps the worst kind of theft you can imagine.

The next two deal with the ninth command to not bear false witness against your neighbor. Liars and perjurers, people who tell lies in ordinary life, and people who tell lies under oath. And now Paul uses a phrase that captures not only the tenth commandment against coveting but any commandment in Scripture. “and if there is anything contrary to sound doctrine”

Now what was the point of that extended list? It is Paul showing you how the Law functions properly. It identifies sin. It names it. It classifies it. It describes and details it. The Law shows us God’s standards and all the ways we fall short of it. The Law gives us God’s holiness and then finds ways we are guilty.

Romans 3:19-20 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

The Law is a diagnostic tool, an X-ray machine, a blood-test, that tells you how healthy you are according to the standard of God’s holiness. And it is good, very good at doing that, when used in that lawful way.

When it is used properly, a sinner will do one of two things. He will either be provoked to sin more, and find himself hardening and rebelling. This is what Paul means when he says, “Romans 7:8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.” A man sees the sign “Wet paint, do not touch”, and he find himself provoked to touch. The little child is told, “Don’t go there” and he more than ever wants to go there.

But the other response is that his heart is broken by his guilt and now wants a solution.

Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24)

The mirror cannot clean you, but it can urge you to use a cloth. The blood test cannot heal you but it can urge you to medicine or fitness. The road sign cannot transport you, but it can show you the way. And if you preach the Law lawfully, and use it lawfully, it shows unbelievers and believers their sin in terms that God sees it. You don’t flatter it, or molly-coddle it or sugar-coat it. Nor do you give people the false hope that they can come out of that place by sheer commitment and discipline.

Instead, it is supposed to drive Christians to the cross, to the saving and sanctifying work of Christ.

That is what Paul alludes to in the last phrase of verse 11: ‘according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.”

The Law doesn’t cleanse you or grow you, but the gospel does. The good news of a blessed God, which literally means a happy, joyful God. This gloriously happy God does not beat His people on the back with a whip of guilt, or goad them from behind with the iron spikes of obligations.

He call to them from the front, as the Good Shepherd who leads His sheep out. He calls to us through the good news of promise that says, “Come to me, I will unburden you. Come to me, and I will give you a yoke that I carry with you, which you will find easy and light, if you trust in me”.

The gospel is not guilt driving you from behind. It is the promise of acceptance, and the promise of enablement drawing you from ahead. The Gospel says, “It is finished. The price has been paid. The righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in everyone in Christ, and by His Spirit, you will be enabled to live up to and beyond that standard.” But come by faith.

The law says, “Be good, and I will bless you.” The Gospel of Grace says, “I have blessed you. Now be good.”

One of the reasons why Jesus and the apostles kept saying that all the laws could be summarised into a love command is because love is something you need grace to do. You cannot just will your self to love. They were showing that every law, every command, is supposed to drive you to a place where you must choose faith over selfish works, trust over self-righteousness.

So is the Christian under the law? Not as a covenant which regulates our relationship with God. The Law Code of Sinai has been replaced by the New Covenant, as the book of Hebrews abundantly shows. But the Law is still good for showing us God’s standards, His holy nature. Indeed, all the commands of Scripture are good for showing us God’s standards. But what the new covenant and the gospel give us is more than mere obligation, they give us promise.

One of the pioneer missionaries to the Philippines was man by the name of Ludwig Nommensen. He was a missionary to the Batak tribesmen, a tribe also based in the Palawan areas. After two years of work, the chief of the tribe came to him asked “Is there really anything in the Christian religion that differs from our traditions? The Batak also have laws that say we must not steal, nor murder, nor take our neighbour’s wife.”

Ludwig Nommensen thought for a moment and then answered quietly, “My God also gives the power to keep His laws.”

The chief was startled. “Can you teach my people that?” he asked. “No, I cannot, but God can give them that power if they ask for it and listen to His Word.”

The missionary was permitted to stay another six months, during which time he taught just one thing—the power of God in the gospel. At the end of that time, the chief said, “Stay; your law is better than ours. Ours tells us what we ought to do. Your God says. “Come, I will walk with you and give you strength to do the good thing.”” There are now about 450,000 Batak Christians, with their own independent church organizations. That was a man who knew how to preach the Law properly, and how to preach the Gospel.

Now not everyone needs the kind of skill in interpreting the Bible that takes years of training. You can read your Bible everyday and profit. Indeed, every time you come to church and hear a sound sermon, you are growing in your ability to rightly interpret the Bible, you’re learning by example.

But Paul is dealing with people who desire to be teachers of the law. They set themselves up as authorities; they claim to be physicians of the soul. But they are actually chancers.

Paul has given us one example of how poor teachers of the Word can make a mess. How vital that our leaders are properly and skillfully trained to handle the Word. How vital that our church members desire the same excellence and precision in their preachers that they do in other domains of life.