k4c said:
Hi adam332,
We were created in the image of God, holy, righteous and perfect. Within our being was the understanding of right and wrong in other words, we were given a conscience in creation. This conscience is God's law within all who come into the world.
So why the law written on stone? The law written on stone was given because of transgressions. These transgressions were the violations of the conscience mankind was living in. The law was given to point out the fact that we have fallen short of God's glory, we have fallen short of how we were created in His image.
Galatians 3:19 What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.
The law was given to reveal sin.
I understand where you're coming from. You're saying the law was "added" AFTER sin. But my view is different and interestingly, can be interpreted from what you just wrote.
The difference between the times before Sinai and those afterward was not a difference as regards the existence of great laws from God, but as regards the explicit revelation of themat Sinai there was a concrete presentation of the moral law in two tables of stone and of other laws in the book of the law. But in the centuries before Sinai Gods patriarchs possessed, in some marked measure, the moral law written in their hearts, and were thus conscious of Gods high moral standards (see Gen. 17:9; 18:19; 26:5). They also possessed, in embryo, the laws of sacrificial ritual. During the long, dark bondage in Egypt, where they dwelt amid the blackest paganism and the most depraved immorality, they well-nigh lost their understanding or awareness of Gods moral standards, and of even the most rudimentary ideas of sacrifices. And when men come to such a state, they are insensitive to sin, for it is by the law that we have the knowledge of sin. As Paul declares elsewhere, I had not known sin, but by the law (Rom. 7:7).
When God took Israel out of the darkness and defilement of Egypt, His first contact with them was in terms of a presentation of the moral laws that are the standard of His government, and of the ceremonial statutes designed to provide Israel with a pattern of ritual service that would make the promised sacrifice of our Lord most clear to them. The law was added because of transgressions (Gal. 3:19), that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful (Rom. 7:13). It was only by having Gods moral law brought into sharp objective focus that the Israelites, sadly adapted as they were to the gross viewpoint of the Egyptians, could be made conscious that they were sinners, and thus needed salvation. And it was because the ceremonial statutes were presented in clear detail that the Israelites were enabled to see the way God had devised to save them from their sins.
So in essence, the law was not created after sin came. But rather, it was PRESENTED before the Israelites(in this case) after sin. The Israelites had been in heathen territory for hundreds of years(about 400) and certainly that would result in the degrading of moral practices throughout the generations. Once they got out from Egypt, they couldn't realise they were sinning because they had forgot what the law was about. Thus, the law "came".
