Above the Law

“Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.” (Mal 2:9 AV)

Just prior to this statement, the prophet is rebuking the people for bringing substandard sacrifices to the temple for offering.  They have held back in their tithes and offerings.  In short, the people have been observing the law, but at their own level of commitment or with their own value system.  The people, when they returned from the captivity, did not rededicate themselves to wholeheartedly follow the law.  It was an obedience of convenience.  The law was partial.  Or, rather, they were partial towards the law.  The word ‘…partial…’ is interesting here.   It means to be lifted up and above.  In other words, where the law is concerned, the people saw it as though they were the higher standard.  Not the law.  They were lifted up above the law.  How appropriate to compare the same attitude with what we see today.

It is funny the things one learns if he stops long enough to open his eyes.  There are two kinds of people in the world.  There are those who trust their own judgment and will go headlong into something without sufficient research.  If there is task at hand with instructions included, he will ignore the information supplied and conquer the project, making more mistakes along the way which were not warranted for such a task.  Then there are those who will read the supplied materials all the way through.  No matter how stringent and overreaching the instructions might be, they will follow them to the tee.  I am not of the later group.  I am somewhere in the middle.  Realizing instructions are written for the protection of the manufacturer first, there are certain hacks that make the task more efficient and effective if ignored.  Wink, wink.  This is called moral relativism.  We have our own value system that works for our own way of life.  We pick and choose what is relevant.  We become the authority of our own lives.  This is not so with the word of God.

Yet, we are filling our pews with professing believers who pick and choose how to live the word of God and claim private interpretation as justification for their choices.  In particular, standards of separation and music have gone right out the window and the scriptures are twisted to justify such standards.  Or, lack thereof. It is ‘what we believe’.  It is ‘how we feel’.  It is ‘what we see’.  As though the LORD has given liberty in truth.  Truth has become relative.  In a previous church, there was an individual who constantly brought up the reality of variety of interpretation if the word of God.  I couldn’t tell if this individual was stating this reality in a state of frustration with those who saw the Bible differently, or making the observation as a way of claiming individual liberty in Bible interpretation.  That aside, truth is not subjective.  It is not up to the individual to decide what truth is.  We are not partial to the law.  The law is partial to us.  It is interesting we are going through the same cycle Israel did.  Idol worship in the form of Christian celebrities and pop-culture has resulted in partiality concerning the law.  It is really too bad.  Time to let the law rule us rather than we the law.