God’s Relationship to the Moral Law

Yesterday, in church, we were asked an interesting question – “What is God’s relationship to the moral law?” In other words, did He create the moral law – the ten commandments, the statutory law, and standards written in the New Testament? Or, is the law an unchanging, set of eternal principles that is over God, as preposterous as that might sound? The other proposition would be that God is the moral law – however, we understand that God is not just a set of principles, but is a real spiritual being with emotions, though they are always conveyed in a righteous manner.

Anyway, this question resulted in an interesting discussion, similar to what might happen when someone asks the infamous “Is God, being omnipotent, able to create a stone that He can’t lift?” Well, for that question, the answer would be “If any amount of strength can do that, then, yes, God can.” But the conclusion that a person would reach would be that, no, no amount of strength could accomplish that feat, so then God wouldn’t be able to do it. Not that He’s not able to do it – it’s just that no one could… ever… it’s an oxymoron, a contradiction.

But, back to the original question – what is God’s relationship to the moral law? Some say that the law is what it is because God said it’s true and thus, we believe and obey. Others counter by saying, the law is not just the law because God said it’s so, since that would leave open the possibility that tomorrow God could tell the world that the law is something different than what it is today. In essence, that would be similar to Allah – giving and changing commands, based on what his emotional state is, at any given point in time.

I believe in the middle ground between the two ideas – that God created the law, but since God is unchanging, the same “yesterday and tomorrow”, He won’t change the law based on a sudden change of His emotional state. God can judge others by the law He created, and be judged by it, and still be perfect.

This is a complicated, philosophical, topic… so feel free to comment with any thoughts, questions, or answers that you think of!