Question concerning God as our Law-Giver: “WHEN DID YAHWEH BECOME OUR LAW-GIVER? EXODUS 34 :1-5; EXODUS 34:28; EXODUS 3:12-15; NEHEMIAH 9 :13-14; PSALMS 89:28-35?”

Christian response,

God became our Law Giver with the creation of the angels and His moral law/natural law was infused into the first man, Adam, and every human being subsequent to Adam (Romans 2:15) as mankind is created in the spiritual image of God and has received certain communicable attributes of God; one of those attributes is an inherent knowledge of God’s reality and His moral law/natural law (Genesis 1:26-28). This was done for two-primary purposes,

1) The moral law of conscience (natural law) acts as a bulwark against unrestrained narcissism and thereby prevents the complete annihilation of human kind through unrestrained hate and lust and covetousness.

2) The moral law of conscience infused by God into His human creation ensures that Judgment in Eternity will manifest with due process and equity; therefore, every man and woman standing in Judgment before Messiah Jesus will be “without excuse” (Romans 1:18-32; Romans 14:11; Revelation 20:11-15).

Concerning God’s written Law through Moses,

The Law of the Covenant provided by God through Moses to Jacob’s children, etched in stone at Sinai and scratched upon parchment, was given to the Hebrew Tribes through Moses for a number of reasons,

1. Jacob’s children were specifically set-apart by God for His purposes as they were to be God’s representatives within the Realm of Time; therefore, Jacob’s children were to be Holy as God is Holy (Leviticus 20:26; Deuteronomy 14:2) and display God’s blessings for obedience, God’s curse and wrath for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28).
2. God’s written Laws given to the children of Jacob were codified in stone and on parchment detailing the Holiness of God and specifically articulating God’s expectation of holiness and obedience in a people group that would be called by His Name as the Hebrew Tribes moved through lands inundated with warring pagan tribes and pagan gods en route to the Land of Promise. Compromise with paganism was unacceptable; therefore, the written Law defined God’s expectations of holiness.
3. God’s written Laws given the children of Jacob demonstrated Israel’s need for an Intercessor concerning righteousness and atonement as the one who approached the Law with fear and trembling understood their inability to keep the Law in mandated perfection (Deuteronomy 27:26). The astute child of Jacob understood that by the works of the Law no one would be found righteous before God but the one who offered their sacrifice by faith, it would be their faith that justified them and not their attempted works of righteousness through Law yet lasting individual atonement for sin remained absent.
4. God’s written Laws given the children of Jacob outlined God’s Messianic and eschatological plans for Israel through whom God would bring forth His Messiah via the seed of the woman through the Tribe of Judah (Genesis 3:15; Genesis 12:3; Genesis 49:10). The Law, the Ark of the Covenant, all demonstrated the coming Messiah through types and prophecy and holiness while God the Father continues to use Jacob’s children as an eschatological time-clock telling the astute and the faithful to watch my people (Jacob’s children) and they will demonstrate where I AM at any given time in World history even up to the time of the Judgment concerning the World and the establishment of the New Jerusalem on a New Earth within a New Heaven.

Israel having failed to keep God’s Laws in mandated perfection was shown mercy by the promise of a New Covenant (2 Timothy 1:9-10), unlike the Covenant of Law which Israel broke, but a New Covenant where the Law would be written upon the heart of the faithful in Messiah and God’s Holy Spirit would be given to the faithful and the Spirit indwelling the child of God would carefully lead God’s people to obey the Law and He would be their God, forever (Jeremiah 31:31-35; Ezekiel 36:26-27; Hebrews 10:16).

In the New Covenant, a Covenant of Grace, mankind is no longer beleaguered by an arduous Law on Stone and scratched upon parchment that only defined sin and condemned void atonement (Romans 3:20; Romans 7:6; Romans 8:3), but in the New Covenant, the faithful trust in the One who kept the Law in perfection for us, Jesus Christ, and by trusting in Jesus, the faithful receive the imputation of Messiah’s perfection/righteousness over their life (2 Corinthians 5:21) by grace through faith as the Law is fulfilled for us in Messiah (Matthew 5:17) and the Holy Spirit writes those Laws upon our heart and carefully guides us in obedience to God’s will through the daily process of sanctification (Hebrews 10:16; John 14:16-17; John 14:26).