This is a very important email (subject: General Law)

I give this email the title I gave it because I suspect nobody is reading my longish emails. But this is a deep and foundational subject. The General Law. The insight I am about to give you I have written of before, but I see it clearer now. This portion of the book I referenced in the previous email helped me:

"THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF THE LAW. Luther generally regarded the law as something negative and closely allied with sin, death, or the Devil. He believed that the dominant function of the law is to abase the sinner by convicting him of sin and driving him to Christ for deliverance.

"Calvin regarded the law more as a guide for the believer, a tool to encourage him to cling to God and to obey Him more fervently. The believer must try to follow God's law not as an act of compulsory duty, but as a response of grateful obedience. With the help of the Spirit, the law provides a way for a believer to express his gratitude."

- Joel R. Beeke. Living for God's Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism (pp. 10-11). Kindle Edition.

I believe the Lutherans were more deep here than the Calvinists. Or at least Luther was. But in a way they most likely weren't aware.

Remember I wrote awhile back that the law of God has been distorted and twisted into what the Work calls the General Law. The big, black blob of accusation and guilt *projecting* that the world and the devil and human beings in general (in their sleeping state) engage in. (In fact I noticed that one way you can see that the guilt of inherent sin in all of us is real is by this projecting the world does in accusing others of sin and guilt. They project it because it is *in them.* In all of us.) Other aspects of the General Law is it's sense of self-righteousness, self-justification, being holier-than-thou, and not knowing its own smell. I speak of the collective human beings (group) that manifest the General Law as a phenomenon.

So look at the first quoted paragraph above. *This is how I experienced being driven to Christ.* It was by the General Law. The onslaught of accusing and shaming the General Law does when you are developing and moving 'out of place.' And the General Law comes at you as something *evil* like sin and death and the Devil.

Now the second quoted paragraph above has truth in it as well. But it refers to God's law *undistorted* and *un-twisted*. And that law (epitomized by the Ten Commandments) is now known as the Law of Christ, boiled down by Jesus into the two great commandments of love God and love your neighbor as yourself (and at a deeper level I submit you can see the two conscious shocks in each of those respective commands). But it's now the fruit of the spirit (our regenerated nature and new heart), not a chain about our neck making us do something we don't want to do. And Jesus said: the burden is light. Ultimately in the glorified state we're no longer even *able* to sin. That is a new state.

So the General Law *does* do a positive work. We don't want to be a part of it, but we need it to get us to turn in the only direction we can turn (because we don't want to conform to the General Law and it won't allow us to even live if we move in any other direction, so we turn to God; we wake up; and we get some protection from God as well... Another way of seeing that is when we get to a point where we have no other direction to go in life but *vertical* to higher influences. The General Law pushes us, unwittingly, in that direction. And it is in that direction ultimately that we encounter the truth of Scripture.)

The other positive thing about the General Law, potentially, is for use as needed *friction* in our development (for the Odysseus-like, 'wily' man). That is all explained in the Work sources.

So you can see this is a *big* subject. A big connection. A big insight. - C.