Douglas Adams opened his second book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, with that famous line, “”In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” Indeed, many people seem quite angry over their very existence and filled with rage towards their Creator. They see sin, death, pain, suffering, and hardship, and ask the question, “Is it really supposed to be this way?”
Some, of course, will suggest that this is just the way things have always been, and things always will be this way. But this is what we call the “Is-Ought Fallacy,” which suggests that just because something is a particular way currently, it ought to be that way forever. Scripture, however, paints a remarkably different picture within the Pentateuch, and especially within the opening chapters of Genesis.
The Law and Grace Motif of Creation
The very act of God creating the cosmos was itself an act of divine love and grace. He did not need to create anything. He was sufficiently satisfied within Himself as the Triune God. The Father, Son, and Spirit needed nothing and no one else. Yet, as church fathers like Augustine pointed out, the love of the Triune God overflowed in such a way that, in order to glorify Himself and permit others to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8), God graciously created humanity. Yet, He does not merely create mankind and say, “Best of luck. Figure it out.” No, we instead see that God carefully constructs a world for mankind to inhabit, brimming with light, life, and beauty. The first five days of Creation prepare the earth to receive the man who will rule over her.
While we see indelible marks of God’s grace in the Creation account, we also see Law. When God creates Adam, He gives the first man a list of commandments to carry out. 1. Work (take dominion of) the earth; 2. Keep (defend and protect) it; 3. Do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:15-17). If the man would fail to do this, the Lord promised he would surely die.
Thus, God’s Law was solidified, even as His grace was made known. So, after Adam and Eve sinned, God did not abandon mankind to a hopeless death. Rather, God extended grace once more and promised, in Genesis 3:15, that a seed would come who would crush the devil beneath His feet and put an end to the curse of sin and death. While mankind would now experience hardship, suffering, and death because Adam as our representative and federal head before God had sinned and brought condemnation upon us all, God would graciously provide a way of salvation. A Savior would come.
A Pattern of Law and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant
Perhaps the most stunning place that we see God’s Law and God’s grace meet in the Pentateuch is at the very moment that the Lord gives the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. While many Christians learn the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 rather early on in their walk with Christ (and even earlier still if they are raised within the Church), Exodus 19:5-6 really deserves special attention as well, for it states, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Our God is a God of covenants; of this, there can be little doubt. Whether He was making a Covenant of Works with Adam (which Adam failed to uphold), or establishing a Covenant of Grace in Genesis 3:15, we see that God continually makes specific covenants with His people as administrations (or, dare I say, dispensations) of the Covenant of Grace. Thus, we have in the Pentateuch alone the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the Mosaic Covenant.
The Mosaic Covenant is interesting, however. It is an obvious administration of the Covenant of Grace but attached to it is a precondition for the Israelites to keep God’s laws in order to receive God’s blessings. In fact, God specifically told the Israelites through Moses that they would be His treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation before Him if they would obey His voice and keep His covenant. Thus, some might be inclined to argue that the Mosaic Covenant is purely Law, and that hardly any grace is present at all.
In fact, when the Mosaic Covenant is renewed in Deuteronomy 26:16, the language of Law-keeping is made even stronger: “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul.” And as the Covenant is renewed at Moab, God tells the Israelites something shocking in Deuteronomy 29:4: “But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.”
How could this be? How could God give the Israelites rules and commandments and laws to obey in order to receive covenant blessings, and then tell them that they cannot do it?
Well, God tells the people exactly what will happen. They will try to keep the Law, but they will fail to do so, because no one can live up to God’s righteous and holy standards, except God Himself. Thus, God promises to do what we cannot do for ourselves in Deuteronomy 30:6: “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”
This is the language of the New Covenant, and it is directly tied to the Law of God. Through the Law, God will reveal our sin. Through obedience to the Law, God will fulfill all righteousness on our behalf. And by His grace, God will not only save us, but He will give us totally new hearts that love Him and, in a surprising twist, are finally able to obey Him in a way we never could have dreamed of before.
This theme is picked up later in Scripture in Ezekiel 36:22-27 and Jeremiah 31:31-34. Because we cannot keep the Law and our hearts are riddled with sin, God promises to transform our hearts. He promises to send His only Son, who will save us by keeping the Law perfectly and then paying our sin debt in full. Thus, the Cross of Christ is the place where Law and grace fully unite.
Here is the real beauty of it all, though. These Mosaic Covenantal blessings now belong to the Christian, according to God’s grace, because Christ fulfilled the Law of God perfectly, merited these eternal blessings, and we are now His heirs: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9-10).