Sinclair Ferguson

So let me take a few minutes in our session on this occasion just to explore how the Bible thinks about the law of God.

and to walk us through a series of stages in biblical theology that I think very much help us to appreciate why God gave the law and how the law functions.

To do that, we actually do well, I think, to begin with Romans 2, 14 and 15.

Romans 2, 14 and 15 is an interesting statement Paul makes.

He's thinking about the New Testament age.

And he says a very striking thing there in chapter two, verses 14 and 15.

He says, Gentiles who do not have the law

by nature may do what the law requires, and they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

What's he saying here?

He's saying you look around the world and you see that there are Gentiles who live according to the commandments of God as though the faded image of those commandments was still on their hearts.

They don't do it perfectly.

He goes on to say their thoughts excuse them sometimes and other times accuse them.

Now, why is this?

He says, they show, Romans 2.15, that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Now, there are some scholars who think that Paul is speaking here about believers who are Gentiles.

It seems to me that it's quite inappropriate in this section of Romans where he's dealing with the ungodly, whether they are Jew or Gentile, to think that suddenly he starts speaking about Gentile Christians.

No, I think what he's saying is this, that in the creation of man, God wrote His law into our constitution so that instinctively we did what pleased God.

It was in our DNA, just as later on legalism is injected into our DNA.

And he's saying that the image of God has not been destroyed by the fall.

It has been seriously marred by the fall.