Law should be an expression of Morality, not the other way around.

Readership: Christian Men
Theme: The Protestant Reformation 2.0: Resetting Christian Masculinity
Author’s Note: This post proceeds from an email correspondence I had with Ed Hurst on 2026/7/2-5.
Length: 1,200 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes

The Law as an Expression of True Morality

My last post expanded on some insights offered by Bruce Charlton and Ed Hurst about The intractable problem of moral legalism in Christian discourse and how Morality does not derive from Laws (2026/7/2).  But our (i.e., Bruce, Ed, and Jack) observations of this phenomenon aren’t complete without pointing out the proper relation between law and morality.  (I’m a teacher, so I feel a moral compunction that requires me to spell this out clearly for my faithful readers.)

It is elementary for a mature believer to understand that the true relation is the opposite — that the law is (or should be) a statement of moral behaviors and principles that are expressed, written, and enforced.  But beyond this, I found it difficult to articulate this truth in any more detailed language that might impart to my readers an understanding of the whys and wherefores.  So I shot an email to Ed Hurst and asked him to tie these ideas together and put them into more precise words.

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Ed Hurst responded,

“Charlton is correct, and the second comment on his blog gets to the point: Moral truth is relational.”

The comment that Ed refers to is from Jonathan who wrote…

“It seems to me that the most important sentence in this post is “Heavenly morality and values are wholly relational, i.e., rooted in love between persons — and there is no place for Laws in Heaven.”  If this hypothesis is correct, the rest of the post proceeds from it.”

Hurst continues [emphasis mine],

“Having spent decades studying the Hebrew mystical frame of mind, against the Western rationalist, the simplest answer remains that God is a real Person, and His Law (His Word) has always been His Son.

What Moses received on Mt. Sinai was a frame of reference for people who lack the spiritual or moral maturity to connect directly to God.  However, that connection was always the intention, to draw people into His personal presence, to get to know Him as Father and Lord.

Faith is inherently unreasonable.  Saying that is anathema to the Western mind.  Westerners do not accept the notion of anything higher than the intellect, so that means faith is below reason.  However, we posit that the heart is above the mind, something very hard to get Westerners to accept.  We end up having to explain heart-led thinking along with everything else.  It’s a very long argument.

Instead of fighting the Western way, I often rely strongly on pointing out that Jesus was a Hebrew man, and because Jesus was a Hebrew man, it should follow that we need to think as He did, and then explaining what a Hebrew mental orientation looks like.  For that, I’ll refer to Catacomb Resident’s post about Imagers without Imagery (2026/6/22) — this essay has become a reference point.”

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Excerpts from said post follow.

“Hebrew minds did not work visually the way Western minds do.  They weren’t that interested in all the particulars; they weren’t building a concrete image of abstract reality.  They didn’t visualize and strive to get a complete image of any subject.  They weren’t analytical and curious about what lay beyond the horizon.  It wasn’t their concern.”

“For Hebrews, our binary thinking and semantic logic would be alien.  Our absolutism would be ridiculous to them.”

“The default expectation is that what you read is not meant literally; almost the whole language is made up of figures of speech.  This was rather common across the Ancient Near East.  There were whole languages that were entirely ceremonial and symbolic.

Hebrew thinking was both symbolic and highly pragmatic.  The first question their minds would ask is, “What can I do with this?”  Abstractions were absent from their language and their thinking.  All of those pictograms were of concrete concepts from life.  It’s a paradox that they could be so concrete, and then symbolic, but never abstract.”

“You need only know what the symbols tell you about how it works, and what authority is imprinted on it.  The only legitimate questions are moral in nature.”

“Our abstract concepts have no place in their world.  They didn’t think about God’s attributes — not once.  They thought of someone they knew and how He had revealed Himself through their experiences.  All of the debates and questions by the Early Church Fathers were, by Hebrew reckoning, illegitimate.  You know God only by how He acts.  Descriptive language is inherently false.”

Catacomb Resident: Imagers without Imagery (2026/6/22)

I asked Ed to clarify whether the Hebrew way of thinking is essentially mystical or relational in orientation.  He answered,

“Both.  Calling it “mystical” is simply a Western mind’s way of noticing it’s not entirely rational.  Calling it “relational” is a Western mind’s way of recognizing that objectivity is a myth.  Trying to come from a Western background, I’d say the fundamental emphasis is feudal- relational, and the result is mystical.”

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The Bottom Line

True Morality is a mimetic and yet true expression of honor and respect for the Person who embodies the Moral Law, Jesus Christ.  Human laws are a logical reduction of morality that serve as a reference point for human reasoning and logical debate (such as in a courtroom), intended explicitly for the benefit and guidance of the morally undiscerning, but are also intended to point the undiscerning to an awareness of a moral recognizance of Christ.  True morality cannot be expressed via Law, apart from this recognizance.

The Moral Law, including human laws as much as possible, should serve as a frame of reference for people who lack the moral / spiritual maturity to connect directly to God and thereby know right from wrong.  However, that connection, that inspiration to faith, was always the intention of the Law, to draw people into His personal presence, to get to know Him as Father and Lord.  If human jurisprudence fails in this task, then it has failed in its purpose, and perhaps failed altogether.

As Ed Hurst described in a post following our discussion, Root of Legalism (2026/7/5), those who indulge in moral legalism are spiritual adolescents who are incapable of reading the Lord’s will concerning good and evil, and who are motivated by envy. Furthermore, those who lack good spiritual discernment are wholly unable to make good judgments.  This is the problem we’re facing now.  For all of worldwide history, but especially in ‘Enlightened’ Western cultures, there have been, and continue to be many influential people — judges and lawyers, counselors and pastors, Biblical scholars and theologians — who count a legalistic interpretation of rote laws, or worse, Feminist / Humanist / Woke values, as a higher priority than the faithful discernment of true morality, the latter of which is impossible for those outside Christ.

In secular legal venues, perhaps nothing can be done about this from an administrative or top-down approach.  But speaking to the individual standpoint of Christians who hold authoritative positions within the church or the judiciary system (we have many authors and readers of this blog who are counselors, lawyers, and pastors), I sternly adjure you to be extremely wary of the importance of having good discernment and how it determines good judgment.  Faithfully exercising your discernment may very well prove to be a matter of life or death, physically or spiritually.

Within the church specifically, all of the above stands as strong evidence of just how important it is to choose spiritually mature judges / leaders having good discernment of morality.  Leadership discipline in this area may very well prove to be a matter of life or death of one’s church.

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