The unwritten Law- The Inner Voice

 

The Law existed even before 10 Commandments 

Moses the greatest prophet of the Israelites who led them out of Egypt received the Ten Commandments in the 13th Century BC. That is about 1443 years before the birth of Jesus. During Moses' time, the law or the Ten Commandments came into force or effect. Until then, how did people live and what laws governed them? Were there any other laws? 

If you trace the history of Noah, we find God commanded or ordered 7 things not to do. It is popularly known as the seven laws of Noah found in Talmud as a binding set of laws for the Children of Noah that is all of humanity. According to the Jewish tradition, if anyone adheres to the Law of Noah, even non-Jews, were assured of a place in the final reward of the righteous.

The Seven Laws of Noah include 

• Prohibitions against worshiping idols 

• Cursing God 

• Murder 

• Adultery 

• Sexual Immorality 

• Theft 

• eating flesh from a living animal 

• Obligation to establish courts of Justice. 

Some of these could be traced out in Genesis chapter 9.

So before Noah what was the law?

From the time of Adam to Moses, no one knows how many centuries existed between them. Everyone sinned. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. (Act 14:16). Acts 17:30 says God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all men everywhere to repent. That is before Jesus presented himself as an atoning sacrifice. In Rom 5:13, To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law. Yet He has not left Himself without testimony to His goodness: He gives you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.”…

Unwritten Law

Paul in Roman chapter 5 exhorts that one law was given through Moses. But before that law, unwritten law - a more fundamental law existed. It too is God’s law, even though it had not been written down, it still existed. Therefore, from Adam to Moses, though no written law existed, unwritten law in the soul or the conscience existed and was in force. Death ruled over them all and punishment awaited them.

A classic example I could cite here is Cain. He had a built-in sense of right and wrong. He knew that his attitude toward his brother was wrong. God told Cain to resist the sinful nature, but instead, Cain allowed it to rule over him, and he murdered his brother. This was a sin, even though no written law said it was.

All of us have a conscience, a natural inbuilt sense of right and wrong unless and until one is an insane or abnormal person. St Paul in Rom 2:14-15 explains the above truth 

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” 

As Cicero jotted it about the law...

There is a true law, right reason, agreeable to nature, known to all men, constant and eternal, which calls to duty by its precepts, deters from evil by its prohibition. This law cannot be departed from without guilt. Nor is there one law at Rome and another at Athens, one thing now and another afterwards; but the same law, unchanging and eternal, binds all races of man and all times.

In the world, only a few study the law but everybody is expected to know the law even though we have not studied it. Ignorance of law excuses no one respectively is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because one was unaware of its content.

Listen to your Soul or Conscience. It does speak. Read your Soul it has the Law of life.