Contra Avatar, mountains don’t float. As a statue has a pedestal, so mountains have a foundation—a huge foundation. As Israel approaches the mountain of God’s law, it has a huge foundation and that foundation is grace.
When Israel comes to Sinai, Yahweh has delivered them, He has redeemed them, they are His people. The blood of the passover lamb has been spilt and applied. Grace covers them. The mountain of God’s law is surrounded by a thick perimeter of grace. Sinai, for the people of God, rests on the foundation of a continent of grace. This is the way God’s children come to the mountain of God’s law. Redeemed sons and daughters, if you’re hearing God speak His ten words from the fire, you’re standing on a continent of grace.
When good parents bring an adopted child home, one of the first loving things they do is explain the house rules. They don’t give the house rules so that the child can become a son. They give the house rules because the child is a son.
The problem we have is that the “ifs” of the law (Exodus 19:5) make us think we must do to become sons. So we either ignore the rules as impossible, or, we’re obsessed with earning covenant love. Children of the King should do neither. What do we make of this “if”? I take this “if” the same we we see it in the New Testament in the New Covenant.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain (1 Corinthians 15:1–2 ESV).
[H]e has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister (Colossians 1:22-23 ESV)
The “adopted” child can still be disinherited. Do I mean they can lose their salvation? No, they can prove they never had it. Adoption didn’t really happen. They were just in the home pretending. When God saves a soul He makes them His child and He does this from the inside out causing them to be born again and made new. They’re different. God’s salvation goes long. Calvin put it this way, “It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.”
Listen to the “if” of Colossians 1 again. “He has reconciled…if you continue in the faith.” He doesn’t say He will reconcile you if you continue in the faith. The continuing in the faith is necessary not to merit the reconciliation but to demonstrate the reconciliation. Continuing in the faith doesn’t make sons, it marks sons. This is what John was getting at when he wrote, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us (1 John 2:19).” Not everyone in the house is a son. Not all who claim to be sons are sons.
For those redeemed by the blood of the lamb, the law isn’t what must be done for salvation, it is what salvation does. Salvation is unto the restoration of the rule of God over the hearts of man. Under His rule, we are saved from sin, both its guilt and its power, to serve and glorify the Lord in obedience.
The law cannot lead to your justification, but it does lead either toward damnation or in sanctification. If the law is not leading you in sanctification, the foundation of justification isn’t there. You’re not standing on the continent of grace. You’re trying to make this mountain float, but it won’t. If the law doesn’t rest on the foundation of God’s grace, it will rest on you in damnation.
No Other Boast 