God’s Law as a Mirror

The first function of the law is, as it manifests the character of the God whose law it is. It is a mirror. Not simply a mirror that reveals the face of God, but it is a mirror for us. Why do you use a mirror?

It’s been said that we never see ourselves as others see us. That’s because we don’t have the perspective of being able to look at ourselves from without. The best shot we have is to look at a mirror, which is to some degree distorted because it’s a backwards image of who we are, and we don’t exactly look like our mirror reflection, do we?

But we glance at the mirror to see that our hairdo is okay, that there’s no ketchup on our tie, that we haven’t left the stain of food on our cheeks. We look at that mirror out of our own vanity and our concern for how we look. And the thing about the mirror that is so dreadful, is that the mirror reveals to us our blemishes, the stains that can be observed.

Now, we can have a looking glass to tell us whether there’s soil on our faces, but how can we tell if there’s a stain on our soul? There is no glass bright enough, reflective enough, to penetrate to the core of our character. If we want to see an accurate reflection of our moral character, we need a mirror far more powerful than the lenses or the glasses that we look at routinely. And that mirror is the law of God.

Because in simple terms beloved, what happens is I can deceive myself into thinking that I’m a righteous man. I can compare myself with other people and look at the laws of humanity and measure myself and give myself a high score. But once I look in the perfect mirror, once I examine the law of God, I’m devastated, because I see the darkness of my sin when I see myself against the standard of perfect righteousness.