What we need now is prophecy

“Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint, but happy are those who keep the law” (Proverbs 29:18).

Do you see the link between “prophecy” and keeping the law?

The wise teacher of Proverbs makes her or his point: Lawlessness starts where prophecy ends. No prophecy, no “law and order.”

What is prophecy?

Many Bible translations do not use the word “prophecy” in this verse. Instead, they use the word “vision.” Some use the word “revelation.”

At its root, the Hebrew word that we translate into English means “to see” or “to behold.”

So, what do the people need to behold or see or else they “cast off restraint” and the law is lost?

Now, this is a Bible verse, so a lot of Bible-believing people will say the answer is simple: God’s way or God’s will. The people need to see what God wants them to do so that they can do it.

How do you see what God wants you to do?

Bible-believing people point to the Bible. “It’s all right there,” they say.

But this is a little like chasing our tails. It’s like saying: “Behold the law to obey the law.”

But if beholding the law is all it takes to obey the law, a lot more people would do it. Many centuries after Proverbs, an accomplished Jewish scholar and teacher named Paul concluded that it is impossible to obey the law. He tried–and did better at it than anyone else–and still could not fulfill the law (Romans 7).

Knowing the law–whether it be the Bible or the laws of the land in which you live–does not have the power to make you obey the law.

The Proverbist says that for a people to live by the law, they must have access to prophecy. Or, literally: They must see a vision.

The proverb makes it clear that seeing a vision is not the same as studying an old text. The vision a people need to see is a vision for their own circumstances and for their own time. It is not a vision of the law; it a vision of what life looks like when the law is lived here and now with an eye on what our present actions will make of the future.

In the Christian culture in which I grew up, we learned the law that sex is marriage only. I believed that law 100 percent.

Do you think it made me want to have sex any less before I got married?

Do you think that, at times, I tried to rationalize away what I believed was right so that I could “go all the way”?

It turned out that knowing the law didn’t do much good when it came to living the law.

But I have only slept with one woman in my entire life–my wife–and I managed to keep myself for her for over 30 years.

How?

Not law, but vision.

From early in life, I imagined (saw in my mind) how good it would feel for both my wife and me to know that I saved this one gift just for her. I imagined (saw in my mind) how good it would feel to be able to look at my wife with clear eyes. I imagined (saw in my mind) how good it would feel to pass on my wisdom to my children, knowing that I have put it into practice myself.

In short, I lived the law because I could see a future that I wanted more than whatever short-term pleasure would come from “casting off restraint.”

Living the law is hard because it is the very definition of “delayed gratification.” I can have something that feels amazing for a few seconds now. Or I can wait (maybe for a very long time) for something that is amazing and lasts and lasts.

If I can imagine that “better future” and keep that image in mind every day, I will live the law that will take me to it step by step.

But if I can’t imagine something better in the future than what I can get right now–“where there is no prophecy”–I will “cast off restraint.”

Instead of “cast off restraint,” some Bible translations say “perish.”

To get people to live the law, it does not help to double down on the law.

Human beings are human beings. It is our imaginations that set us apart from all other living things.

So hammering away at the law is only beating people down. They know the law; that doesn’t mean they have the power or the will to live it.

But a vision captures the human imagination. It releases great power to live the law as a way to a future that is better than the present. Indeed, a vision gives the law meaning that dead letters could never have on their own.

One of the great mistakes my own branch of the Christian family tree made a long time ago is going “all in” on obedience and leaving out prophecy. We told people to “just try harder” to live the law. It was a fool’s errand. The Bible has been plain all along: “Just try harder” doesn’t work. “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint.”

In order for people to be “happy” as they obey the law, they must have prophecy (vision) to inspire them and give them hope.

When the church of Christ is acting as an effective witness to the world, it is not “throwing the book” at people. We are most effective witnesses when we are prophesying. That is, casting a vision of a future that all of us so desperately want. The good news is that God wants it as desperately as we do. So much so that he sacrificed that which was most precious to him. The death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is proof that God’s love for us must be true. The vision of the kingdom that Jesus described is a vision that can inspire obedience to the way of Christ.

The good news is not that God gave us a law; the good news is that God gives us a vision of all-inclusive, unbreakable, unconditional, unstoppable love. The good news is the vision of God making for us the world that our own laws could never make. The good news is that it is coming. As sure as the sun rises in the morning.

If we really love each other and we really love the world that “God so loved,” let’s put first things first. Let’s turn back to prophecy (vision). Let’s trust that as we share that vision of God’s future, God will grant power to his people to live his laws freely, joyfully, and without judgment of others.

What we need now is prophecy.