The Law Is Good If Used Lawfully
8 But we know that the law is good if a person uses it lawfully, 9 as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave-traders, for liars, for perjurers, and for any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine, 11 according to the Good News of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.
The law is defended and the would-be teachers of it are not, and the distinction turns on who the law is aimed at.
Verse 8 makes a concession that is really a claim: we know that the law is good. Nothing in the letter's quarrel with these men involves treating the law as a problem. What is at issue is use — the law is good if one uses it lawfully, and the wordplay is deliberate. There is a lawful and an unlawful way to handle it, and the men wanting to teach it have found the second.
Verse 9 states the principle: law is not laid down for a righteous person. That is easily misread as abolition, and the list that follows prevents it. The law is not the instrument by which a righteous person is made righteous, and it is not a set of levers for the teachers of verse 7 to pull. It is aimed at what it names.
And what it names, across verses 9 and 10, tracks the second table of the commandments in order — those who strike father or mother, murderers, the sexually immoral, slave-traders (which is theft of a person), liars and perjurers. The list is not random abuse; it is the commandments read as a description of what they were given to confront.
Verse 10 closes the list with a phrase that does the letter's work throughout: whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. The word is medical — healthy teaching, as opposed to the diseased craving for controversy the letter names later 1 Timothy 6:4.
settled What this mark means