In 1 Timothy 1:3-11, the fundamental principle that the law is for the lawless applies to every kind of law. For example, the reason we need speed limits is that there are so many reckless drivers on the road. The reason we need boundaries and fences is that it is the only way to prevent unlawful trespass. And the reason we need civil rights and race relations legislation is in order to protect citizens from insult, discrimination and exploitation. If everybody could be trusted to respect everybody else’s rights, laws to safeguard them would not be necessary.

The same is true of God’s law. Its prohibitions and sanctions relate to the lawless. And Paul proceeds at once to illustrate the principle of ‘law for the lawless’ with eleven examples of law-breaking. The first six words, which he sets in pairs, appear to be more general than specific. The law is made, he writes, …for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful (who dishonor God and depart from righteousness), and the unholy and unreligious (who are devoid of all piety and reverence). These clearly refer to our duty to God, at least in general.

But because the next five words are extremely specific in relation to our duty to our neighbor, it is natural to ask whether the first six may be meant to be specific in relation to our duty to God. Working backwards from the allusion to our father and mother, he proposes that been unreligious means profane in the sense of sabbath-breaking (the fourth commandment), that unholy designates those who take God’s name in vain (the third commandment), that sinful alludes to idolaters (the second commandment), and that ungodly denotes those who flout the first commandment to love God exclusively.

This leaves the words lawbreakers and rebels, which seem to be introductory and to describe those who reject all law and discipline. This reconstruction is certainly ingenious, and may be correct, although it has to be declared unproved.

The next five words, however, do evidently allude to commandments five to nine. Those who kill their fathers and mothers of course break the fifth commandment to honor our parents; the expression is so extreme that Murderers break the sixth commandment, ‘You shall not kill’, while adulterers and perverts break the seventh. Slave traders or kidnappers are guilty of the most heinous kind of stealing, and both liars and perjurers break the ninth commandment not to bear false witness against our neighbor.

The tenth commandment prohibiting covetousness is not included in Paul’s catalogue, perhaps because it is a sin of thought and desire, not of word or deed. But in order to make his list comprehensive he concludes that the law is also made for whatsoever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. What is this? It is doctrine which conforms to the glorious gospel (literally, the gospel of the glory) of the blessed God, which he entrusted to us.

It is particularly noteworthy that sins which contravene the law (as breaches of the Ten Commandments) are also contrary to the sound doctrine of the gospel. So the moral standards of the gospel do not differ from the moral standards of the law.

We must not therefore imagine that, because we have embraced the gospel, we may now repudiate the law!

To be sure, the law is impotent to save us (Romans 8:3), and we have been released from the law’s condemnation, so that we are no longer under it in that sense. (Romans 6:15; 7:6; 8:1-2). But God sent his Son to die for us, and now puts his Spirit within us, in order that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:3-4). There is no antithesis between law and gospel in the moral standards which they teach; the antithesis is in the way of salvation, since the law condemns while the gospel justifies.