Life is made up, largely, of God and other people. That is why man was tested by the giving of the Law. "By the Law is the knowledge of Sin" (Romans 3:20). The Law revealed the presence of a fatally malignant nature in man by revealing man’s incapacity to relate to his Creator and to his fellow creatures. The first Table of the Law declared man’s responsibility to God and demonstrated that man could not produce the righteousness that God had a right to require of hint The second Table of the Law announced man’s responsibility to his fellow man and revealed man’s complete inability to relate properly to his neighbor. An inherently good man would have passed this two-part test of Law with flying colors; Christ did. Our badness is disclosed to us by our total incapacity to comply with the righteous demands which God, through Law, properly imposes.

Both Tables of the Law are summarized for us in Scripture. Man is to love God with his heart and soul and mind and strength...in short, with every fiber of his being. Then he is to love his neighbor as he does himself (Matthew 22:37-40). God is not here advocating self-love--man already has plenty of that, and that is the problem. No, far from teaching us to love ourselves, God, is pointing out that we already do love ourselves, that we love ourselves far above our neighbor.

John posits the impossibility of loving God Whom we haven’t seen if we don’t love man whom we have seen (1 John 4:20). To truly love God would issue in automatically loving His creature, and so we see that our failures to measure up to the demands of Table Two underscore our failure to fulfill the requirements of Table One. In other words, every time one is rude to his fellow man, for instance, he would break not only the second Table of the Law which governs his relationship to man, he would break the first Table of the Law which governs his relationship to God. In sinning against my neighbor I sin against the God Who created Him.

God did not give the Law to see if man could keep it, but to show man that he cannot keep it. The Law is God’s righteous requirement of man. Keeping it perfectly would only be doing what man is supposed to do--nothing more (Luke 17:10). Not keeping it reveals something basically wrong with man. When man does not do what he ought to do he betrays the fact that he is not what he ought to be. God did not give the Law to Gentiles (Romans 2:14). He first gave the Gentile world over to a debased mind (Romans 1:28); then He formed the nation Israel with all of her special privilege and gave the Law to her (Romans 9:4).

He gave the same Law to the unsaved in Israel that He gave to the saved (Exodus 20:18-19). Frequently, unsaved people have suggested to me that they have no responsibility to God since they do not claim to be Believers. This defense will not stand. The unbeliever on Law ground had as much responsibility as the Believer. Being an unbeliever does not remove one from God’s Universe. The unbeliever came from Adam’s loins just as did the Believer. Adam’s fall was the fall of the human race; Adam’s sin, our sin. When Adam died spiritually, his death became our death (Romans 5:12). Adam brought forth progeny in his own image -- fallen man, fallen progeny! Being an unbeliever would not excuse a man from responsibility before God any more than a murderer would be excused his murder because he denied the existence of the judge.

All of the penalty of a broken Law was visited on Christ at Calvary (Galatians 3:13). Here stands the great watershed between what God says and what man prefers to believe -- between Salvation and Religion. I once asked a hitch-hiker why he thought Christ died. Without hesitation he replied, "To throw the door of Heaven open." He was parroting his catechism. His church had taught him that Christ died to make Salvation possible; God teaches that Christ died to provide Salvation full and free. There is a world of difference here. To deny that Christ’s salvation work on Calvary was complete and is therefore free is the same as to deny that He accomplished anything on Calvary at all. They are no worse who deny that Calvary accomplished anything than they who deny that Calvary accomplished everything. If Christ, through His crosswork, did not save me completely, but left something for me to do, then He left me unsaved (Hebrews 7:25). To be 99% saved is the same as to be 100% lost. If I am unsaved until I do my part then, when I have done my part I have become my own savior. This cannot be! If I leave the cross of Calvary with something left undone, then I am as lost when I leave the cross as I was when I came to it.

As an unsaved child of fallen Adam I need redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that Christ died to throw the door open to the realization of these things. The crosswork of God’s Son redeems me; it does not give me a chance to be redeemed by something else (Romans 3:24). His death for me reconciles me; it does not throw open a door to reconciliation by some other means (Romans 5:10). Christ is said to be the Propitiation for my sins, not the door-opener to propitiation (1 John 2:2). The Law has not been thrown out of court. The Law has not been defeated or dishonored. The Law’s demands have been met, its penalty paid, the righteousness it required provided, its holiness satisfied. "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes." (Romans 10:4)