"At the heart of every relationship is law, and, at the
same time, the purpose of law, really, in God is relationship. Let me give you
an illustration to show you what I mean. It’s going to be a little funny. I
hope it makes it obvious, though. Let’s just say a man and a woman are dating,
and they’re getting serious. They’re thinking about each other, thinking about
marriage, so one night they sit down and say, “Let’s really find out what our
passions are and what’s really important to us.”
So she begins to pour her heart out, let’s say. She says, “Let me tell you
three things that are very important to me. Some of them seem trivial, but,
first of all, I can’t stand cigarette smoke. My nose, my eyes … I just can’t be
in the same room. I’m just in a lot of trouble with it. I just can’t stand it.
I can’t even be around it. You need to know that.”
He says, “Okay. Well, I’m going to smoke. I’m going to smoke three packs a day.
I’m going to smoke all the time. I’m going to smoke in bed. I’m going to smoke
when we eat. I’m going to smoke. I’m glad you told me about that, but I’m going
to smoke.” She says, “Well let me tell you something else.” She says, “I feel very,
very strongly … You make a lot of money and I make a lot of money, and together
we’re going to make a lot of money, but here’s what I believe.
I feel very strongly that we should set our living expenses significantly below
those which we could afford, and I would like to be deliberately and creatively
and intentionally and significantly generous with our money. I would like to be
very intentional in finding causes and charities and things we can be involved
with and we can give our money to in significant proportions. It’s very
important that we do that.” He listens, and he says, “Well, no. What I want to
do is I would like to buy three or four homes and condos in luxurious places,
and I will go into debt if necessary in order to afford that.”
She says, “Let me tell you one more thing. I would like to live in an
interracial neighborhood. I believe in cross-cultural relationships. I think
that’s very, very important.” He says, “Oh, no. For goodness’ sake. You can’t
trust those people. I would have to lock all my doors. Oh no, no. We’re not
going to do that at all.”
Then he says, “I’m so glad we had this little talk. This is wonderful. Now
let’s get down to business. Honey, will you marry me?” She would go, “No.” Now,
what is she doing? At the heart of every relationship is law. What is the law?
Well, if you’re in love and you want to have a loving relationship, you can’t
live any old way you want to. You have to get to know the passions and the
convictions of the person you love, and the only way for you to possibly have
that love relationship is to honor that. You can’t just live any old way. You
can’t just trample on, in a sense, the laws of love, the passions of the heart.
In the Old Testament whenever there’s a relationship between a man and a woman
in marriage, between God and a human being, between kings, between peoples,
it’s always covenantal. They say, “We can have a relationship, but we won’t
have a relationship unless there are some rules, unless there are some
commonalities. We honor that, and if we honor it … blessing, love, embrace. If
we do not … curse, which is always to be cut off. ‘Sorry, we can’t have a
relationship.’ ”
There are people who love without any covenantal structure at all. We call them
codependent people. That’s what we used to call them. Now we call them “people
without boundaries.” I don’t know what you call them now. What it means is I
enter into a relationship, and I don’t care whether you trample on everything.
I don’t care if you smoke. I don’t care if you trample on my values. I don’t
care what you do to me. I still love you. I’ll still be in a relationship. I’ll
just let you walk all over me.
See, no covenantal structure, nothing you hold the other person to, no real
blessing, by the way. There’s no real intimacy in that kind of relationship.
And of course, no curse. You never cut them off. Now, here’s the difference.
When you enter into a relationship with a man or a woman to get married and
there has to be a cutting off because the other person will not honor, like in
that funny illustration, that’s painful.
Here’s the problem. God is different than any other person. This tells us your
relationship with God is not optional. I don’t have to marry you, I don’t have
to be your friend, but I do have to have a relationship with God. I was built
for that. That’s the reason it says in verse 12, “The law is not based on
faith; on the contrary, ‘The man who does these things [the law] will live by
them.’ ” What that means is unless you’re willing to hear the law of God and
commit to that, unless you’re willing to obey that, you’re cursed. It’s like
any other relationship.
God says, “I am holy.” God says, “Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not be selfish.”
The Golden Rule. He tells you these things, and if you don’t do that, there has
to be a curse. God is not codependent, like so many of us are. Here’s the
problem. Without God we die. We die forever. We cannot live unless we fulfill
the covenant. We cannot live if we’re cut off from him. We cannot live. We have
to have him. But Paul says we don’t. We’re under a curse. That’s why something
has to be done. That’s why we need the cross, but what actually happened?"
— Timothy Keller, Self-Substitution of God
