In 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law, Tom Schreiner answers a question about the purpose of the law:
From one perspective the law was intended to give life to Israel.Paul says in Romans 7:10 that “the commandment was intended for life” (my translation). If one kept the law, then the law would be a vehicle for life. If one looks at the law from this restricted perspective, then the law was given to grant life for those who observed it. Nevertheless, what Paul emphasizes repeatedly is that God sovereignly intended the law to reveal transgressions and to bring about death. Are these two perspectives contradictory? Not at all. It is simply a matter of looking at the purpose of the law from two different perspectives. From an immanent perspective, the law was intended to give life; but from a transcendent perspective, it was given to increase sin. The former is not falsified or trivialized by the latter. The promise of life through the law was frustrated by human sin, not by any defect in the law.
The typical Jewish view was that the law was given to bring about life. In Judaism there was the proverb, “The more Torah the more life” (M. Aboth 2:7). This was the standard Jewish view…. Romans 7:10 reflects the same perspective, but Paul differs from his Jewish contemporaries in seeing a transcendent purpose to the law that is remarkably different. Jews typically believed that the law was given to counteract the sin Adam introduced into the world. Astonishingly, Paul argues that the law is not a solution but part of the problem: “Now the law came in to increase the trespass” (Rom. 5:20). The law at one level may have been given to bring life, but it actually failed miserably to do so and increased transgressions instead. Such is Paul’s argument in Romans 7:7-25. The content of the law is “holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12). Nevertheless, the law has been co-opted by sin, so that sin has increased with the addition of the law. Sin has taken on the character of rebellion, in that commands forbidding particular actions, such as coveting, have actually promoted sin, because the command arouses the desire to do what is prohibited. The cancer that brings death should not be traced to the law but to the human being, who is dominated by the flesh.
I’ve never heard the terms immanent and transcendent used to describe two different ways to look at the law. I’m not sure what definitions of those words he’s using. I’d like to ask, if I could.
Despite my uncertainty over the use of those terms, I think this explanation of the two perspectives on the purpose of the law is instructive. What do you think? Does it help?