Wednesday, 5 March 2008

John Piper on the Law

"1. The Law in it's narrow, short-term design demands perfectly the 613 commandments of the Pentateuch in order to have life ... 2. The recipients of this law (Israel and indirectly all the Gentiles) are uniformly sinful and hostile to God. They do not submit to God and cannot ... 3. The effect of this law on sinful Israel when she is confronted with hundreds of commandments is the awareness of latent sin (Romans 7:7), the increase of sin by it's becoming exceedingly sinful and the multiplication of trangressions (Romans 5:20, 7:13).

4. This narrow, short-term design is expressed in Galatians 3:22 - the effect of this design of the law is to kill rather than to make alive ... 5. All of this deadly design of the law is sufficient to warrant the statement in Galatians 3:12 ... The narrow short-term design of the law is imprisonment to sin, multiplied transgressions and death".

John Piper - "The Future of Justification: A Response to N T Wright" - IVP, Nottingham (2008) - (pp197-198).

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