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adulterous woman that she was condemned. She found herself between a rock and a hard place. Without those heavy rocks waiting to pound her sinful flesh, she may have died in her sins and gone to hell. I doubt if she would have fallen at the feet of Jesus without the terror of the Law having driven her there. Thank God that it awakened her and caused her to flee to the Savior.
    The sinner thinks that he is rich in virtue, but the Law shows him that he is morally bankrupt. If he does- n’t declare bankruptcy, the Law will mercilessly call for his last drop of blood.
    What About Legalism?
    One evening when I had taken a team to Santa Monica to preach the gospel, it began raining. It not only rained, but the heavens flashed with lightning. Thunder seemed to shake the earth in an unusually severe thunderstorm for Southern California. As a consolation for our team, we purchased two large pizzas to snack on as we took shelter from the pelting rain under a movie theater veranda.
    As most of the thirty-member team munched on pepperoni pizza, I noticed the heartwarming sight of an elderly homeless woman having a fight with a ten-inch piece of cheese. It looked like a stretched rubber band as she pulled at it with what teeth she had left. I smiled at her and asked if she wanted me to get her a pair of scissors. Amid the battle, she was able to return a courteous smile.
    After she had downed the large slice of pizza, I offered her another one. Surprisingly, she declined. A few minutes later, however, she was battling a second piece. The scene was truly heartwarming .
    Suddenly, the police arrived. The theater manager had called the law and told them he wanted the woman removed. There were thirty of us sheltering from the rain, yet he had sorted out a poor, hungry, homeless woman, and was telling the police to force her to move away! I heard the officers protesting that she was just sheltering from the rain. The manager was adamant: the woman had to move on.
    At that moment I remembered that my pocket was bulging with a bundle of one-dollar bills. Each Friday night I would pull in a crowd by asking trivia questions and giving dollar bills to those who answered correctly. Once the crowd felt comfortable, I would swing from the natural to the spiritual and preach the gospel. As the police officers (reluctantly) began to move the old woman on, I stepped forward and grabbed her hand. She flinched and swung her fear-filled eyes toward mine, probably thinking that she was being handcuffed. Then she noticed that I had stuffed a wad of bills in her hand, and in a second her fear changed to joy.
    The Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 1:8, “Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed]” (Amplified). Just as the theater manager had used the law for something for which it was never designed— turning an elderly homeless woman out into the rain— so there are those who would use God’s Law for something for which it was never designed.
    For what purpose was God’s Law designed? The fob lowing verse tells us: “The Law is not made for a righteous person, but...for sinners” (1 Timothy 1:9 ,10 ). It even lists the sinners for us: the disobedient, the un-godly, murderers, fornicators, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, etc. The Law’s main design is not for the saved, but for the unsaved. It was given as a “schoolmaster” to bring us to Christ. It was designed primarily as an evangelistic tool.
    The Law’s rightful purpose is simply to act as a mirror to show us that we need cleansing.
    It is an unlawful use of the Law to seek to use it for “justification.” The Scriptures make that very clear: “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ...; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Galatians 2:16). The Law’s rightful purpose is simply to act as a mirror to show us that we need cleansing. Those who seek to be justified