“Dead to the Law” in Gal 2:9 and Rom 7:4 means that the believer is dead to the law as an indictment, a legal sentence of death against him, Christ having died for him, but the believer is alive to the law as the righteousness of God. The purpose of Christ’s atoning work was to enable man to keep the law by freeing man “from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2), “in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom 8:4). (Notice the law is not just fulfilled FOR us, but IN us) Man’s justification is by the grace of God in Jesus Christ; then God enables man to be sanctified by means of the law of God. Man grows in grace as he grows in law-keeping, for the law is the way of sanctification. Civil law cannot be separated from Biblical law, for the Biblical doctrine of law includes all law, civil, ecclesiastical, societal, familial, and all other forms of law.
Law is in every culture religious in origin. It must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society. The Hebrew word for law is Torah, which means instruction, authoritative direction. The Law is the revelation of God and his righteousness. There is no distinction between law and grace. The question in James’s Epistle is faith and works, not faith and law. Judaism had made law the mediator between God and man, and between God and the world. It was this view of law, not the law itself, which Jesus attacked. As himself the mediator, Jesus rejected the law as mediator in order to re-establish the law in its God-appointed role and law, the way of holiness. He established the law by dispensing forgiveness as the law-giver in full support of the law as the convicting word which makes men sinners. The Law was only rejected as mediator and as the source of justification. In the New Testament era, only apostolically received revelation was ground for any alteration in the law. Example: Peter required a special revelation before he would enter the house of the uncircumcised Cornelius and admit the first Gentile convert into the Church by baptism (Acts 10:1-48).
The state is to be God’s servant, for our welfare. It must exercise justice, and it has the power of the sword. But can the state be God’s servant and by-pass God’s law? And if the state must exercise justice, how is justice defined, by the nations or by God? There are as many ideas of justice as there are religions. For the Bible, there is no law in nature, because nature is fallen and cannot be normative. Moreover, the source of law is not nature but God. There is no law in nature but a law over nature, God’s law.
All the Laws of God are summed up in “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Inside of those commandments we have the Ten Commandments. Inside of each of those commandments we have the case laws that illustrate the basic principle in terms of specific cases. The law has as its purpose and direction the restitution of God’s order. Biblical law requires restitution to the offended person, but even more basic to the law is the demand for the restoration of God’s order. The New Testament illustrates restitution after extortion in the form of unjust taxation in the person of Zaccheus (Luke 19:2-9).
Information from "Institutes of Biblical Law" by R.J. Rushdoony
