Connecting The Dots: Mexican Train and God’s Law

While visiting my wife’s brother and his wife recently, we enjoyed a game of Mexican Train. If you play Mexican Train you already know that there are lots of rules that are homemade, so the first thing we had to do was agree on the rules that would apply to our friendly contest. We found we had a different understanding of the rule governing the playing of a double. Fortunately, we had a printed set of rules for the game, which spelled out our understanding of how play is to proceed when someone plays a double anywhere on the table. An internet search of the game rules reveals some variations, but the basic idea is that when someone plays a double anywhere on the table, that double must be “satisfied” – i.e. have another domino played against it before a play can be made anywhere else on the board, regardless of who that play devolves to. So, in a sense, nothing else can happen until that double is “satisfied”. The rule cannot be waived or repealed, only satisfied!

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In the Old Testament when a king issued a law or decree, any transgression of that law or decree triggered an immediate and unstoppable invocation of the prescribed punishment. Remember Daniel and the lion’s den? Having been tricked into the unwise decree that only he, the king, was to be worshipped for the next 30 days, and then faced with having to enforce the punishment of throwing the offender, in this case Daniel whom he loved, into the lion’s den he was powerless to deviate from the prescribed punishment no matter how much he might want to. Nothing else could happen until the law was “satisfied”! Fortunately, we know the “rest of the story” how God’s grace and remedy was more powerful than what it took to “satisfy” the law! The law was “satisfied”, the punishment was enforced, but the outcome was not death but life for Daniel!

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God’s law, which is immutable, says “the wages of sin is death”, and “we have all sinned”. Now we stand before God, the judge. Nothing else can happen until God’s law is “satisfied”. God has no choice but to find us guilty and sentence us to death. But just as we’re about to be hauled off to everlasting death and torment, Jesus stands up and shouts “Wait! I died to satisfy the death sentence for this one and for all who would accept my salvation. I find his name in my ‘Lamb’s Book of Life’ as one of those who has accepted my offer. I have already paid the price for him! The law is satisfied, the punishment has been enforced, and now the offender, whom you, O God, loved enough to let me die for, does not need to perish but has eternal life with me!”

Are we shouting yet?