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| Dispensationalism and the Law of God Part 3 The moral law is the eternal rule of righteousness which God has given to men, requiring them to love Him with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves. In the very nature of the case, such a law can neither be repealed nor modified. The grand reason why the great Governor of the world gave such a law was because it was infinitely fit we should love Him with all our hearts; nothing less was due Him. For us to suppose that God should ever annul or alter this law when the grounds and reasons of His first making it remain as forcible as ever, when what it requires is as right as ever, and when it becomes Him as the moral Ruler of His creatures to require it from them as much as ever; -- to suppose such a thing constitutes the highest reproach upon all God's moral perfections. It would suppose Him releasing His creatures from doing right, and giving them license to do wrong. So far from man being benefited by having such a law abrogated or altered, it would be one of the greatest and sorest calamities that could happen. How sad it is, then, to think that the mind of fallen man is enmity against the Law-Giver! And how humbling when the Christian realizes that there is still within him that which is opposed to such a holy, such a righteousness, such a spiritual law! And why is it that fallen man hates the law? Because it condemns him. But let the Christian place the blame where it truly belongs: within and not without. The law condemns none whose heart and life is in conformity with it. Sin is the cause of the condemnation. We have none but ourselves to blame when the holy law denounces our wrongdoing. Instead of looking askance at the law, the Christian should eye it with profound gratitude, for it is the very instrument which the Holy Spirit uses to convince him of his self-will and self-love, for "by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). How sad and serious, then, is the error that Christ came here in order to make an end of the law. Instead, it was foretold centuries beforehand "He will magnify the law, and make it honourable" (Isa 42:21). To suppose that the Son of God became incarnate, suffered and died in order that the law might be repealed, would be to suppose that He had become the enemy of God -- to His holiness and justice, His claims and His governmen t-- and that He had gone over to the side of His Father's rebellious subjects. The law was, indeed, in the way of the sinner's salvation, and this was the ground of the necessity for His incarnation, obedience and death. Yet that was so far from being designed to set the law aside, it was for the express purpose of fulfilling it: it was to obey its precepts and endure its penalty on the behalf of His people, so that the law was as much honoured as though His people had themselves obeyed it, or suffered its curse. So far from the law having been repealed every Christless sinner is as much under the law today -- as much under its demands, its condemnation and curse for his failure to meet those demands -- as if Christ had never come into the world, and there were no Mediator between God and men. He who believes not in and surrenders to the lordship of Christ, he who is not united to Him by the Spirit so that His merits and righteousness (which consist in what He did and suffered to maintain and honour the law) is properly imputed to his account, is under the condemnation and wrath of God (i.e., the curse of His Law) as much as if there had been no Saviour. In proof of this we ask the reader to carefully ponder John 3:18-20, 36; Romans 1:18; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9. So far from the Christian being released from the requirements of the law, he is as much under the law as a rule as he ever was, and under as great obligations to a perfect conformity unto it in heart and life, as the non-Christian is. And everything in him or of him which comes short of perfect holiness, or full obedience to the law -- considered in its utmost spirituality and strictness -- is perfectly inexcusable, and is as criminal (or evil) in him as if he were not a believer in Christ; yea, much more so, for the superior light, discernment, and advantages he has, and the special favors and privileges bestowed on him do vastly increase his obligations to perfect obedience, and therefore render every degree of opposition or want of conformity to the infinitely excellent Law of God immensely more heinous than in others. The law, considered in all its unmodified strictness, requiring perfect holiness of character and conduct, is as much a rule for Christians to walk by now as ever it was. Christ never designed to deliver His people from their full obligations to the law, but instead greatly increased their obligations by what He has done for them. He has indeed made full atonement for all their sins against the law, and so has delivered them from the curse of the law, being Himself made a curse for them, so that they are, in this sense, "not under the law, but under grace" (Rom. 6:14). They are no longer subject to the infinitely dreadful punishment which it pronounces upon the transgressor, for they have been completely delivered from this by a free pardon. But that has not canceled their obligation to obey the law. The design of Christ's blessed work was to deliver His people from all sin, and bring them to a full conformity to the law -- and, eventually, this shall be fully realized. To say that Christ came here to purchase a cancellation of the law would be procuring lawless liberty for rebellious subjects. No, He did not magnify the law and make it honorouable, that His disciples might despise and violate it; but that they should be delivered from its condemnation and brought to delight in and obey its precepts. An unequivocal proof that the law was not set aside is seen in the fact that one of its commandments came in power to the conscience of Saul some years after the Cross: he distinctly says, "I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet" (Rom. 7:7). Most certainly the Holy Spirit would never have applied an abrogated and superseded statute. Had the moral law been canceled, the Spirit would no more have revived it than He would have restored the Levitical sacrifices. "And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest" (Exo. 34:1). "The treaty that was on foot between God and Israel, being broken off abruptly by their worshipping the golden calf, when peace was made, all must begin anew, not where they left off, but from the beginning. Thus backsliders must 'repent, and do the first works' (Rev. 2:5). Before, God Himself provided the tables, and wrote on them; now, Moses must hew him out the tables, and God would only write upon them. Thus, in the first writing of the law upon the heart of man in innocency, both the tables and the writing were the work of God; but when those were broken and defaced by sin, and the Divine Law was to be preserved in the Scriptures, God therein made use of the ministry of man, and Moses first. But the prophets and Apostles did only hew the tables, as it were, the writing was God's still; for 'all scripture is given by inspiration of God.' Observe, when God was reconciled to them, He ordered the tables to be renewed, and wrote His Law in them, which plainly intimates to us: "First, that even under the Gospel of peace and reconciliation by Christ (of which the intercession of Moses was typical), the moral law should continue to oblige believers. Though Christ has redeemed us from the 'curse of the Law,' yet not from the command of it, but still we are under the law to Christ; when our Saviour, in His sermon on the mount expounded the moral law, and vindicated it from the corrupt glosses with which the scribes and Pharisees had broken it (Matt. 5:19), He did in effect renew the tables, and make them like the first, that is, reduce the law to its primitive sense and intention. Secondly, that the best evidence of the pardon of sin, and peace with God, is the writing of the law in the heart. The first token God gave of His reconciliation to Israel was the renewing of the tables of the law; thus, the first article of the new covenant is 'I will write My laws in their hearts': Hebrews 8:10" (Matthew Henry). The great blessing of the Gospel is that it is the appointed channel through which God gives grace to keep the law: ponder Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:27, Ephesians 4:24. "None enter into the Gospel state but those that readily and entirely give up themselves to the will of God; and therefore none can have benefited in the sin-offering and sacrifice of Christ but those that consent to return to their duty of the law and live in obedience to God. Surely God never pardons any while they are in rebellion and live under the full power and dominion of sin: no, they must consent to forsake sin and return to the allegiance due to their proper Lord" (T. Manton, 1660). Repentance (which is a sorrow for and repudiation of rebellion against God) precedes "the remission (forgiveness) of sins" (Mark 1:5). We must be "converted" (turned round and brought into subjection to God) in order that our "sins may be blotted out" (Acts 3:19). The law does not and can not change; its requirements are not modified nor its penalty relieved by the Cross of Christ. But the Christian's relation to the law has been changed: he has been placed on a new footing in regard to it. Christ having substituted His obedience for us in the matter of justification, and endured in His own Person the law's condemnation, we are forever freed from its penalty, having in Him died to its curse. What, then, is the relation between the Christian and the law, which conversion and faith establishes? Answer, it is now our Rule of Life as it is held (so far as Christians are concerned, not in the hands of God as "Judge," but) in the hands of the Mediator: 1 Corinthians 9:21. The Christian's new relation to the law is that of Christ Himself: His feelings toward the law ought to be ours. He declared, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart" -- the seat of the affections (Psa. 40:8); and the Christian having been made a partaker of His nature also "delights in the law of God after the inward man" (Rom. 7:22), and the more he mortifies the flesh and walks in the Spirit, the greater is his love for the law, and the closer and fuller his conformity to it. "Some speak as if the servant were greater than the Master, and the disciple above his Lord; as if the Lord Jesus honoured the law, and His people were to set it aside; as if He fulfilled it for us, that we might not need to fulfill it; as if He kept it, not that we might keep it, but that we might not keep it, but something else in its stead, they know not what. The plain truth is, we must either keep it or break it. Which of these men ought to do let those answer who speak of the believer having nothing more to do with the law. There is no midway. If it be not a saint's duty to keep the law, he may break it at pleasure, and go on sinning because grace abounds. The word duty is objected to as inconsistent with the liberty of forgiveness and sonship. Foolish and idle cavil! What is duty? It is a thing due by me to God; that line of conduct which I owe to God. And do these objectors mean to say that because God has redeemed us from the curse of the law, therefore we owe Him nothing, we have no duty now to Him? Has not redemption rather made us doubly debtors? We owe Him more than ever, and we owe His Holy Law more than ever; more honour, more obedience. Duty has been doubled, not canceled, by our being delivered from the law; he who says that duty has ceased, because deliverance has come, knows nothing of duty, or law, or deliverance. The greatest of all debtors in the universe is the redeemed man. What a strange sense of gratitude these men must have that, because love has canceled the penalty of the law, and turned away its wrath, therefore reverence and obedience to that law are no longer due. Is terror in their estimation the only foundation of duty; and when love comes in and terror ceases, does duty become a bondage? "No, they may say, but there is something higher than duty, there is privilege; it is that we contend for. I answer, the privilege of what? Of obeying the law? That they cannot do with; for they are no longer under the law, but under grace. What privilege, then? Of imitating Christ? Be it so. But can we imitate Him whose life was one great law-fulfilling without keeping the law? What privilege, again we ask? Of doing the will of God? Be it so. And what is law but the revealed will of God? And has our free forgiveness released us from the privilege of conformity to the revealed will of God? "But what do they mean by thus rejecting the word duty, and contending for that of privilege? Privilege is not something distinct from duty, nor at variance with duty; but it is duty and something more! it is duty influenced by higher motives; duty uncompelled by terror or suspense. In privilege the duty is all there; but there is something superadded, in the shape of motive and relationship, which exalts and ennobles duty. It is my duty to obey government; it is my privilege to obey my parents. But in the latter case is duty gone because privilege has come in? Or has not the loving relationship between parent and child only intensified the duty by super-adding the privilege, and sweetening the obedience by the mutual love? 'The Love of Christ constraineth.' There is something more than both duty and privilege added" (Andrew Bonar, 1860). Many object that the Ten Commandments are insufficient as a rule of duty for the Christian because they do not contain the whole of it. But in Matthew 22:37-39 Christ Himself reduced them unto two, for love to God and love to our neighbour comprehends every act of duty that can possibly be performed; he who loves God supremely, willingly obeys Him whatever forms He shall prescribe. The new commandment of love to the brethren is comprehended in the old commandment (1 John 2:7, 8), for he that loveth God cannot but love His image wherever it is seen: Galatians 5:13-15; Romans 13:8-10. God's commandment is "exceeding broad" (Psa. 119:96), and though the whole of Christian obedience be not formally expressed in the Ten Commandments, yet virtually it is. When Christ said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:40), He made known the fact that all the exhortations and admonitions contained in the entire Scriptures are but an exposition and enforcing of the law. Few perceive the extent or scope of the Ten Commandments: what each one includes, implies, and involves. The Ten Commandments are the main root from which all other trunks and branches of duty are drawn. Yet notwithstanding all that has now been pointed out in these articles, many imagine the whole of it is practically set aside or refuted by the words, "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10). Of course it is, and we have not written a single sentence which in the slightest degree contradicts or clashes with that Divine statement. From the moment of Adam's creation till now love has always been the "fulfilling" of the law. Where love be absent, no matter how carefully our actions be attended to, there is no real and acceptable fulfilling or keeping of the law, for the law itself enjoins and requires love to God and to our neighbour. The trouble is that the objector confounds the principle or spring of obedience (love) with the rule (the law) itself. The law tells me what to do, love urges me to the doing of it. Romans 13:10 does not say, "love is a substitute for the law," but "love is the fulfilling of the law." To make love and law synonymous would be like confounding the railroad track on which the engine must run, with the power which pulls the train. "To make the rule of obedience that which is the moving cause of it, is the same thing as for a son to say to his father, 'Sir, I will do what you desire me when I feel inclined to do so, but I will not be commanded.' Whatever: may be argued against the authority of God, I believe there are few if any parents who would put up with such language from their own children" (A,. Fuller, 1814). --A.W.P. |
