By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854
BOOK THIRD.
CHAPTER II, SECTION SIXTH.
P. 176-194.
The relation of believers under the New Testament to the law has been a fruitful subject of controversy among divines. This has arisen chiefly from the apparently contradictory statements made respecting it in New Testament Scripture; and this again, partly from the change introduced by the setting up of the more spiritual machinery of the Gospel dispensation, and partly also in consequence of the mistaken views entertained regarding the law, by those to whom the Gospel first came, which required to be corrected by strong representations of an opposite description. Thus, on the one hand, we find our Lord saying, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." [1] Stronger language could not possibly be employed to assert the abiding force and obligation of the law's requirements under the New Testament dispensation; for that this is specially meant by "the kingdom of heaven," is too obvious to require any proof. In perfect conformity with this statement of our Lord, we find the apostles everywhere enforcing the duties enjoined in the law; as when the apostle James describes the genuine Christian by "his looking into the perfect law of liberty, and continuing therein," and exhorts the disciples "not to speak evil of the law, or to judge it, but to fulfil it;" [2] or when the apostle Paul not only speaks of himself as "being under the law to Christ," [3] but presses on the disciples at Rome and Galatia the constant exercise of love, on the ground of its being "the fulfilling of the law;" [4] and in answer to the question, "Do we, then, make void the law through faith," he replies, "God forbid; yea, we establish the law." [5]
But, on the other hand, when we turn to a different class of passages, we meet with statements that seem to run in the precisely opposite direction, especially in the writings of St Paul. There alone, indeed, do we meet with them in the form of dogmatical assertions, although in a practical form, the same element of thought occurs in the other epistles. In the first epistle to Timothy, he lays this down as a certain position, that "the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient." [6] And in the epistle to the Romans, he indicates a certain contrast between the present state of believers in this respect, with what it was under the former dispensation, and asserts that the law no longer occupies the place it once did. "Now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." [7] And again, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." [8]
That in all these passages the law, in the strict and proper sense, is meant--the law of the ten commandments, the sum of whose precepts is perfect love to God and man--we may here take for granted, after what has been said regarding it in the first section of this chapter. It seems perfectly unaccountable, on any grounds of criticism at least, that so many English writers should have thought of solving the difficulty arising from the use of such language, by alleging the Apostle to have had in view simply the ceremonial law, as contradistinguished from the moral. This view, we should imagine, is now nearly exploded among the better-informed students of Scripture; for not only does the Apostle, as Archbishop Whately states, speak of the freedom of Christians from the law, "without limiting or qualifying the assertion--without even hinting at any distinction between moral and ceremonial or civil precepts," but there can be no doubt, that it is what is commonly understood by the moral part of the Mosaic legislation--the Decalogue, that he has specially and properly in view. [9]
In what respect, then, can it be said of Christians, that they are freed from this law, or are not under it? We must first answer the question in a general way; after which only can we be prepared for pointing out distinctly wherein the relation of the members of the New Covenant to the law differs from that of those who lived under the Old.
1. Believers in Christ are not under the law as to the ground of their condemnation or justification before God. It is not the law, but Christ, that they are indebted to for pardon and life, and receiving these from him as his gift of grace, they cannot be brought by the law into condemnation and death. The reason is, that Christ has, by his own pure and spotless obedience, done what the law, in the hands of fallen humanity, could not do---he has brought in the everlasting righteousness, which, by its infinite worth, has merited eternal life for as many as believe upon him. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus;" "Whosoever believeth upon him is justified from all things;" or, in the still stronger and more comprehensive language of Christ himself, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but hath passed from death to life." [10]
This, it will be perceived, is what is commonly understood by deliverance from the law as a covenant. But it is proper to remark, that though the idea expressed in such language is scriptural, the language itself is not so, and is rather fitted to mislead. For it appears to imply that, as the law certainly formed the basis of a covenant with the Old Testament Church, its being so formed made it something else than a rule of life, and warranted the Israelites to look to it, in the first instance at Ieast, for life and blessing. This, we have already shewn, was not the purpose for which the law was either given or established as a covenant among them; and deliverance from it in the sense mentioned above, marks no essential distinction between the case of believers under the Old and that of those under the New Testament dispensation. The standing of the one, as well as the other, was in grace and when the law came, it came not for the purpose of subverting or changing that constitution, but only to direct and oblige men to carry out the important ends for which they had been made partakers of grace and blessing. Strictly speaking, therefore, the church never was under the law as a covenant, in the sense commonly understood by the term; it was only the mistake of the carnal portion of her members to suppose themselves to have been so. But as God himself is unchangeable In holiness, the demands of his law, as revealed to men in grace, must be substantially the same with those which they are bound in nature to comply with under pain of his everlasting displeasure. In this respect all may be said, by the very constitution of their being, to be naturally under law to God, and, as transgressors of law, liable to punishment. But through the grace of God in Christ, we are not so under it, if we have become true believers in him. We have pardon and acceptance through faith In his blood; and even though "in many things offending, and in all coming short," yet while faith abides in us, we cannot come into condemnation. To this belong all such passages as treat of justification, and declare it to be granted without the law, or the deeds of the law, to the ungodly, and as a gift of free grace in Christ.
2. But this is not the only respect in which the Apostle affirms believers now to be free from the law, nor the respect at all which he has in view in the sixth and seventh chapters of his epistle to the Romans. For the subject he is there handling is not justification, but sanctification. The question he is discussing, is not how, as condemned and sinful creatures, we may be accepted as righteous before God; but how, being already pardoned and accepted in the Beloved, we ought to live. In this respect, also, he affirms that we are dead to the law, and are not under it, but under grace--the grace, that is, of God's indwelling Spirit, whose quickening energy and pulse of life takes the place of the law's outward prescriptions and magisterial authority. And if it were not already clear, from the order of the Apostle's thoughts, and the stage at which he has arrived in the discussion, that it is in this point of view he is now considering the law, the purpose for which he asserts our freedom to have been obtained, would put it beyond all reasonable doubt, viz. "that sin might not have dominion over us" (ch. vi. 14), or, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us." (ch. viii. 4.) [11]
According to the doctrine of the Apostle, then, believers are not under the law as to their walk and conduct; or, as he says elsewhere, "the law is not for the righteous;" believers "have the Spirit of the Lord, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." But is not this dangerous doctrine? For where now is the safeguard against sin? May not each one do as he lists, oblivious of any distinction between holiness and sin, or even denying its existence, as regards the children of God. on the ground that where no law is, there is no transgression? To such questions the Apostle's reply is, "God forbid,"--so far from it, that the freedom he asserts from, the law has for its sole aim a deliverance from sin's dominion, and a fruitfulness in all welldoing to God.
The truth more fully stated is simply this: When the believer receives Christ as the Lord his righteousness, he is not only justified by grace, but he comes into a state of grace, or gets grace into his heart as a living, reigning, governing principle of life. What, however, is this grace but the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus? And this Spirit is emphatically the Holy Spirit: holiness is the very element of his being, and the essential law of his working; every desire he breathes, every feeling he awakens, every action he disposes and enables us to perform, is according to godliness. And if only we are sufficiently possessed of this Spirit, and yield ourselves to his direction and control, we no longer need the restraint and discipline of the law; we are free from it, because we are superior to it. Quickened and led by the Spirit, we of ourselves love and do the things which the law requires.
Does not nature itself teach substantially the same lesson in its line of things? The child, so long as he is a child, must be subject to the law of his parents; his safety and well-being depend on his being so; he must on every side be hemmed in, checked, and stimulated by that law of his parents, otherwise mischief and destruction will infallibly overtake him. But as he ripens toward manhood, he becomes freed from this law, because he no longer needs such external discipline and restraint. He is a law to himself, putting away childish things, and of his own accord acting as the parental authority, had he still been subject to it, would have required and enforced him to do. In a word, the mind has become his, from which the parental law proceeded, and he has consequently become independent of its outward prescriptions. And what is it to be under the grace of God's Spirit, but to have the mind of God?--the mind of Him who gave the law simply as a revelation of what was in his heart respecting the holiness of his people. So that the more they have of the one, the less obviously they need of the other; and only require to be complete in the grace of the Spirit, to be rendered wholly independent of the bonds and restrictions of the law.
Or, think again of the relation in which a good man stands with respect to the laws of his country. In one sense, indeed, he is under them; but in another and higher sense, he is not---he is above them, and moves along his course freely and without constraint, as if they existed not. For, what is their proper object but to prevent, under severe penalties, the commission of crime? Crime, however, is already the object of his abhorrence; he needs no penalties to keep him from it. He would never harm the person or property of a neighbour, though there were not a single enactment in the statute-book on the subject. His own love of good and hatred of evil keep him in the path of rectitude, not the fines, imprisonments, or tortures, which the law hangs around the path of the criminal. The law was not made for him.
So is it precisely with the man who is under grace. The law, considered as an outward discipline, placing him under a yoke of manifold commands and prohibitions, has for him ceased to exist. But it has ceased in that respect only by taking possession of him in another. It is now within his heart. It is the law of the Spirit of life in his inner man; emphatically, therefore, "the law of liberty; "his delight is to do it, and it were better for him not to live, than to live otherwise than the tenor of the law requires. We see in Jesus, the holy child of God, the perfect exemplar of this free-will service to heaven. For while he was made under the law, he was so replenished with the Spirit, that he fulfilled it as if he fulfilled it not; it was his very meat to do the will of Him that sent him; and not more certainly did the law enjoin, than he in his inmost soul loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Such also in a measure will ever be the case with the devout believer upon Jesus---in the same measure in which he has received of his Master's spirit. Does the law command him to bear no false witness against his neighbour? He is already so renewed in the spirit of his mind, as to speak the truth in his heart, and be ready to swear to his own hurt. Does the law demand, through all its precepts, supreme love to God, and brotherly love to men? Why should this need to be demanded as matter of law from him who has the Eternal Spirit of love bearing sway within, and therefore may be said to live and breathe in an atmosphere of love? Like Paul, he can say with king-like freedom, "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me;" even in chains I am free; I choose what God chooses for me; his will in doing or suffering I embrace as my own; for I have him working in me both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Now, it is here that the difference properly comes in between the Old and the New Testament dispensations--a difference, however, it must be carefully marked, of degree only, and not of kind. The saying is here especially applicable,--"On the outside of things look for differences, on the inside for likenesses." [12] In correspondence with the change that has taken place in the character of the divine administration, the relative position of believers has changed to the law and the Spirit; but under both covenants alike, an indispensable place belongs to each of them. In the former dispensation the law stood more prominently out, and was the more peculiar means for leading men to holiness-- supplying, as by a sort of artificial stimulant and support, the still necessary defect in the inward gift of the Spirit's grace. We say the necessary defect; for the proper materials of the Spirit's working, the great objects of faith and hope, not yet being provided or openly revealed, the Spirit could not be fully given, nor could his work be carried on otherwise than in a mystery. It was so carried on, however; every true member of the covenant was a partaker of the Spirit, because he stood in grace, at the same time that he stood under the law. But his relation to the Spirit was of a more hidden and secret, to the law of a more ostensible and manifest character. In the New Testament dispensation this relation is precisely reversed, although in each respect it still exists. The work of Christ, which furnishes the proper materials of the Spirit's operations, having been accomplished, and himself glorified, the Spirit is now fully and unreservedly given. Through the power of his grace, in connection with the word of the Gospel, the divine kingdom avowedly purposes to effect its spiritual designs, and bring forth its fruits of righteousness to God. This, therefore, it is to which the believer now stands immediately and ostensibly related, as the agency through which he is to fulfil the high ends of his calling--while the law retires into the back-ground, or should be known only as existing within, impressed in all its essential lines of truth and duty upon the tablet of the heart, and manifesting itself in the deeds of a righteous life. But whether the law or the spirit stand more prominently forward, the end is the same--namely, righteousness. The only difference that exists, is as to the means of securing this end--more outward in the one case, more inward in the other; yet in each a measure of both required, and one and the same point aimed at. Hence the words of the apostle: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth," i. e. both alike are for righteousness--that is the one great end which Christ and the law have equally in view. But in Christ it is secured in a far higher way than it could possibly be through the law, since he has not only perfected himself as the divine head and surety of his people in the righteousness which the law requires, but also endows them with the plentiful grace of his Spirit, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in them, walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
With these distinctions clearly perceived, we shall easily
understand what is said in the New Testament scriptures of the
difference, in a practical point of view, as to the condition of
believers under the past and the present dispensations respectively.
This is spoken of as a state of comparative freedom, that of a certain
species of restraint or bondage--not the bondage, indeed, of slaves and
mercenaries, which belonged only to the carnal, as opposed to the
believing portion of the church--but the bondage of those, who, though
free-born children, are still in nonage, and must be kept under the
restraint and discipline of an external law. This, however, could in no
case be the whole of the agency with which the believer was plied, for
then his yoke must have been literally the galling bondage of the
slave. He must have had more
or less the Spirit of life within,
begetting and prompting him to do the things which the law outwardly
enjoined--making the pulse of life in the heart beat in harmony with
the rule of life prescribed in the law; so that, while he still felt as
under tutors and governors, it was not as one needing to be "held in
with bit and bridle," but rather as one disposed readily and cheerfully
to keep to the appointed course. This would be the case with him always
the more, the more diligently he employed the measure of grace within
his reach; and if in a spirit of faith he could indeed "lift the latch
and force his way" onwards to the end of those things which were then
established, he might even have become insensible to the bonds and
trammels of his childhood-condition, and attained to the free and
joyful spirit of the perfect man. So it unquestionably was with the
Psalmist, and doubtless might have been with all, if they had but used,
as he did, the privileges of grace. For such, the law was not a mere
outward yoke, nor properly a yoke at all; it was "within their heart;"
they delighted in its precepts, and meditated therein day and night; to
listen to its instructions was sweeter to them than honey, and to obey
its dictates was better than thousands of gold and silver. [13]
It is only, therefore, in a comparative sense, that we are to understand the passages in the New Testament Scripture formerly referred to; and in the same sense, also, that similar passages are to be interpreted in Old Testament Scripture, Such, for example, as Jer. xxxi. 31-34: "Behold the clays come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the clay that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,... but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour," &c. (comp. Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, which differs only in particularizing the agency by which the better state of things was to be introduced--the larger gift of the Spirit). "The discourse here cannot be of a new and more complete revelation of the law of God, for this is common to both economies; no jot or tittle of it can be lost under the New Testament, nor can a jot or tittle be added to it; God's law rests on his nature, and this is eternally immutable (Mal. iii. 6). Just as little can the discourse be of the introduction of an entirely new relation, which by no means has the former for its groundwork. In this respect Kimchi rightly remarks: "Won erit fcederis novitas, sed stabilimentum ejus" (not a change, but an establishing of the covenant). The covenant with Israel is eternal; Jehovah would not be Jehovah, if an absolutely new beginning could take place. (Rom. xv. 8.) When, therefore, the subject of discourse is here the antithesis of an old and a new covenant, the former must designate, not the relation of God to Israel in itself, and in all its extent, but rather only the former manifestation of this relation--that, through which the Lord, until the time of the prophet, had made himself known as the God of Israel." [14] And in regard to the difference indicated by the prophet, as to the believer's connection with the law under the two covenants, the learned author, expressing his concurrence in particular with Calvin and Buddeus, goes on to shew, that this also is not absolute, but only relative. He justly states, that the idea of a purely outward giving of the law is inconceivable, as God would then have done for Israel nothing farther than he did for the traitor Judas, in whose conscience he proclaimed his holy law, without giving him any power to repent--that the terms in which the law is spoken of by the Psalmist, in the name of the Old Testament saints, shews it to have been in their experience no longer a law that worketh wrath, but a law in connection with the Spirit, whose commands are not grievous--and that the antithesis between the Old and the New state of things, though in itself but relative, was expressed in the absolute form, merely because the gift of the Old Testament appeared, when compared with the infinitely more important and richer blessing of the New, as so small, that it vanished out of sight.
But something else than that should also vanish from our sight. For, if we enter as we should into these views, the idea of the law's abrogation or abolition under the New Testament, in whatever form proposed, will be repudiated as equally dangerous and ungrounded. The law is in no proper sense abolished by the revelations of the Gospel; nor does the Apostle in any fair construction of his language say that it is. He merely says, that through grace we are not under it, and in a conjugal respect are dead to it. In a certain qualified sense, believers in Old Testament times might be said to be married to it, or to be under it --only, however, in a qualified sense, for God himself--the God of grace, as well as of law--was properly their husband (Jer. xxxi. 32), and they stood under the covenant of grace before they came under the covenant of law. But though, even in that qualified sense, believers are not now under the law, or married to it, the righteousness required is as much binding upon their consciences, and expected at their hands, as it ever was at any former period of the church's history. More so, indeed; for the very reason, as the Apostle tells us, why they are placed less directly under the law, and more under the Spirit, is, that the end of the law might be more certainly attained, and a richer harvest yielded of its fruits of righteousness. Therefore it is, that in the same epistle in which those expressions are used, conformity to the law's requirements is still held out, and inculcated as the very perfection of Christian excellence (Rom. xiii. 8-10). For it is not, as if these two, the law and the Spirit, were contending authorities, or forces drawing in two distinct and separate lines. On the contrary, they are essentially and thoroughly agreed--emanations both of them of the unchanging holiness of Godhead--the one its outward form and character, in which it was to appear, the other its inward spring and living pulse. What the one teaches, the other wills--what the one requires, the other prompts and qualifies to perform;--and as the law at first came as an handmaid to the previously existing covenant of grace, so does it still remain in the hand of the Spirit to aid him, amid the workings of the flesh, and the imperfections of grace, in carrying out the objects for which he condescends to dwell and act in the bosoms of men.
Hence appears the monstrous absurdity and error of Antinomianism, which proceeds on the supposition of the law and the Spirit being two distinct, possibly contending, authorities--a doctrine not so much opposed to any particular portion of Scripture, as the common antithesis of all its revelations, and the subversion of all its principles. But let it once be understood that the law and the Spirit have but one end in view, and one path, in a sense, to reach it--that the motions of the Spirit within, invariably, and by the highest of all necessities, take the direction prescribed by the law without--let this be understood, and Antinomianism wants even the shadow of a ground to stand upon.--It is not merely the Antinomians, however, who contend for the abrogation of the law; the same thing is substantially done by many divines, who belong to an entirely different class. For example, Archbishop Whately, in his Essay on the Abolition of the Law, maintains this position: "The simplest and clearest way then of stating the case, is to lay down, on the one hand, that the Mosaic law was limited both to the nation of the Israelites, and to the period before the Gospel; but, on the other hand, that the natural principles of morality, which, among other things, it inculcates, are, from their own character, of universal obligation, and that Christians are bound to obey the moral commandments it contained, not because they are commandments of the Mosaic law, but because they are moral." This view, which puts the Decalogue on a footing with the laws of Solon or Mahomet, in so far as any obligation on the conscience is concerned, is that also maintained, and with a considerable show of learning, supported by Bialloblotzky, in his work De Abrog. Legis. The form into which the learned author throws his statement is, that the nomothetical authority of the Mosaic law is abolished, but its didactical authority remains; in other words, it has no binding force as a law upon the conscience, but may still be profitably used for direction in the way of duty, due allowance, of course, being made for all that belonged to it of temporary appointment and ceremonial observance, which is no longer even a matter of duty. His chief arguments in supporting this view, are, that in some things, especially in regard to the Sabbath, marriage, the symbolical rites (for all are thrown, as we observed before, into one mass), Christ and his apostles have corrected the law--and that they oppose the authority of the Spirit to the external tyranny of the law (as if these were two contending masters, and we actually have the passage, "No man can serve two masters," produced in proof of the argument, p. 63.) Such views have been substantially met already. And we simply remark farther, that they necessarily open the widest door for Antinomianism and Rationalism; for if, as possessors of the Spirit, we must first judge what part of the law is moral or didactic, and even when we have ascertained this, still are permitted to hold, that we are not connected with it as a matter of binding and authoritative obligation, it is easy to see what slight convictions of sin will be felt, what loose notions of duty entertained, how feeble a barrier left against either the carnal or the fanatical spirit ridding itself of the plainest obligations. It is quite possible, no doubt, to produce unguarded statements, easily susceptible of an improper meaning, and partly, indeed, expressing such, from Luther's works on the law. But his real views, when carefully and doctrinally, not controversially expressed, were substantially correct, as will appear from a quotation to be given presently--or from Melancthon's works, which Luther is well known to have held to be better expositions than his own of their doctrinal views. For example, after speaking (vol. i. p. 309) of the Mosaic law as not availing to justification, and in its civil and ceremonial parts done away, Melancthon adds: "But the moral law, since it is the wisdom of God and his eternal rule of righteousness, and has been revealed, that man should be like God, cannot be abolished, but remains perpetually, Rom. iii. 31, viii. 4."
The question naturally arises here, Of what use is the law to those who really are under the Spirit? We answer, it would be of none, if the work of spiritual renovation, which his grace is given to effect, were perfected in us. But since this is far from being the case, since imperfection still cleaves to the child of God, and the flesh, in a greater or less degree, still wars against the Spirit, the outward discipline of the law can never be safely dispensed with. Even St Paul was obliged to confess that he found the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and that though he was ever following after, he was conscious of not having yet attained to the full measure of grace and excellence in Christ. Therefore, for his own quickening and direction, as well as for that of others, he felt it needful to press the demands of law, and to look to the exceeding breadth of its requirements. Luther also, and his fellow- labourers, although their views were not always correct as to the relation in which Israel stood to the law, nor by any means clear regarding the precise nature of the change introduced by the Gospel, yet were sound enough on this point. Thus they say in one of their symbolical books: "Although the law was not made for the righteous (as the Apostle testifies, 1 Tim. i. 9), yet this is not to be understood as if the righteous might live without law. For the divine law is written upon their hearts. The true and genuine meaning, therefore, of Paul's words, is, that the law cannot bring those who have been reconciled to God through Christ under its curse, and that its restraint cannot be irksome to the renewed, since they delight in the law of God after the inner man. ...But believers are not completely and perfectly renewed in this life. And though their sins are covered by the absolutely perfect obedience of Christ, so as not to be imputed to believers to their condemnation--and though the mortification of the old Adam, and the renovation in the spirit of their mind has been begun by the Holy Spirit, yet the old Adam still remains in nature's powers and affections," &c. [15]
There are three different respects in which we still need the law of God, and which it will be enough briefly to indicate: 1. To keep us under grace, as the source of all our security and blessing. This we are ever apt, through the pride and self-confidence of the flesh, to forget, even though we have already in some measure known it. Therefore the law must be our schoolmaster, not only to bring us to Christ at the beginning of a Christian life, but also afterwards to keep us there, and force continually back upon us the conviction, that we must be in all respects the debtors of grace. For when we see what a spirituality and breadth is in the law of God, how it extends to the thoughts and affections of the heart, as well as to our words and actions, and demands, in regard to all, the exercise of an unswerving devoted love, then we are made to feel that the law, if trusted in as a ground of confidence, must still work wrath, and that, convinced by it as transgressors, we must betake for all peace and consolation to the grace of Christ. Here alone, in his atonement, can we find satisfaction to our consciences, and here alone also in the strengthening aid of his Spirit, the ability to do the things which the law requires. 2. The law, again, is needed to restrain and hold us back from those sins which we might otherwise be inclined to commit. It is true, that in one who is really a subject of grace, there can be no habitual inclination to live in sin; for he is God's workmanship in Christ Jesus, created in him unto good works. But the temptations of the world, and the devices of the spiritual adversary, may often be too much for any measure of grace he has already received, successfully to resist; he may want in certain circumstances the willing and faithful mind either to withstand evil or to prosecute, as he should, the path of righteousness; and, therefore, the law is still placed before him by the Spirit, with its stern prohibitions and awful threatenings to move with fear, whenever love fails to prompt and influence the heart. Thus the Apostle: "I am determined to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified"--it is my delight, my very life to preach the doctrines of his salvation-- but if the flesh should recoil from the work and render the spirit unwilling, "a dispensation is committed to me, yea woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." Thus the discipline of the law comes in to supply the imperfections of the Spirit, and curb the still remaining tendencies of sin. 3. And it is yet farther needed to present continually before the eye of the mind a clear representation of the righteousness which, through the grace of the Spirit, believers should be ever striving to attain. While that grace is still imperfect, they are necessarily in clanger of entertaining low and defective views of duty; nay, in times of peculiar temptation or undue excitement, they might even mistake the motions of the flesh for the promptings of the Spirit, and turn aside into the path of error. But the law stands before them with its revelation of righteousness, as a faithful and resplendent mirror, in which they may behold, without any danger of delusion or mistake, the perfect image of that excellence which they should be ever yielding to God. "We are free--we have the Spirit, and are not subject to bondage." True, but free only to act as servants of Christ, and not to throw around you a cloak of maliciousness. You are free, not to introduce what you please into the service of God, for he is a jealous God, and will not allow his glory to be associated with the vain imaginations of men; you are free to worship him only in spirit and in truth. You are free--what! to give or withhold, as seems good to you, what may be needed to advance the cause of God in the world--to employ or not for sacred purposes the weekly return of his day of rest! How impossible! seeing, that if you are really filled with the Spirit, the love of God must have been breathed into your soul, so as of necessity to make it your delight to do what you can for his glory, and to engage in the services which bring you into nearest fellowship with heaven.--Thus, the freedom of the Spirit is a freedom only within the bounds and limits of the law; and the law itself must stand, lest the flesh, taking advantage of the weakness of the Spirit's grace, should in its wantonness break out into courses which are displeasing to the mind of God.
So much for the law in the strict and proper sense--the law of the ten commandments, the freedom from which enjoyed by the Christian is not absolute, but relative only; just as the Israelites' want of the Spirit was also relative, and not absolute. But in regard to what is called the ceremonial law, the freedom is absolute, and to keep up the observance of its symbolical institutions and services after the new dispensation entered, was not only to retain a yoke that might be dispensed with, but also an incongruity to be avoided, and even a danger to be shunned. For viewed simply as teaching ordinances, intended to represent and inculcate the great principles of truth and duty, they were superseded at the introduction of the Gospel by the appointment of other more suitable as instruments in the hand of the Spirit for ministering instruction to the minds of men. The change then brought into the divine administration was characterized throughout by a more immediate and direct handling of the things of God. They were now things no longer hid under a veil, but openly disclosed to the eye of the mind. And ordinances, which were adapted to a state of the church, when neither the Spirit was fully given, nor the things of God were clearly revealed, could not possibly be such as were adapted to the church of the New Testament. The grand ordinance here must be the free and open manifestation of the truth--written first in the word of inspiration, and thenceforth continually proclaimed anew by the preaching of the Gospel; and such symbolical institutions as might yet be needed, must be founded upon the clear revelations of this word, not like those of the former dispensation, spreading a veil over the truth, or affording only a dim shadow of better things to come. Hence, the old ritual of service should have fallen into desuetude, whenever the new state of things came in; and the tenacity with which the Judaizing Christians clung to it, was the indication of a very imperfect enlightenment and corrupt taste. Had they known aright the new wine, they would straightway have forsaken the old. So long as they could get the kernel only through the shell, it was their duty to take the one for the sake of the other. But now, when the kernel itself was presented to them in naked simplicity, still to insist upon having the shell along with it, was the clear sign of an unhealthy condition--an undoubted proof that they had not yet come to the full knowledge and appreciation of Gospel truth, and were disposed to rest unduly in mere outward observances. The Apostle, therefore, on this ground alone, justly denounces such Judaizers as carnal, and as in spiritual things acting the part of persons who, though of full age, have not put away childish things, but continue in a willing "bondage to the elements of the world."
This, however, was by no means the whole of the misapprehension which such conduct betrayed. For while those ordinances of the former dispensation were in one point of view means of instruction and grace, in another they were signs and acknowledgments of debt. Calling, as they did, continually for acts of atonement and cleansing, and yet presenting nothing that could satisfactorily purge the conscience, they were, even when rigorously performed, testimonies, that the heavy reckoning for guilt was not yet properly met--bonds of obligation for the time relieved, but standing over to some future period for their full and adequate discharge. This discharge in full was given by Christ when he suffered on the cross, and brought in complete satisfaction for all the demands of the violated law. He is, therefore, said to have "blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." The charges of guilt and condemnation which that handwriting had been perpetually making against men as transgressors, were now laid in one mass upon the body of the crucified Redeemer, and with its death were for ever abolished. So that those ceremonies being, as Calvin justly terms them, "attestations of men's guilt, and instruments witnessing their liability," "Paul with good reason warned the Colossians how seriously they would relapse, if they allowed a yoke in that way to be imposed upon them. By so doing, they at the same time, deprived themselves of all benefit from Christ, who, by his eternal sacrifice once offered, had abolished those daily sacrifices, which were indeed powerful to attest sin, but could do nothing to destroy it." [16] It was in effect to say, that they did not regard the death of Christ as in itself a perfect satisfaction for the guilt of their sins, but required the purifications of the law to make it complete--at once dishonouring Christ, and shewing that they took the Old Testament ceremonies for something else than they really were.
It has sometimes been alleged, that in the case of the Jewish
believers there was still a sort of propriety, or even of obligation,
in continuing to observe the ceremonies of Moses--until, at least, the
epistle to the Hebrews was written, formally discharging them from all
further attendance upon such services. [17] But there is no real
foundation
for such an opinion. It is true that no express and authoritative
injunction was given at first for the discontinuance of those services;
but this arose simply out of accommodation to their religious
prejudices, which might have received too great a shock, and among
their unbelieving neighbours excited too outrageous an opposition, if
the change had at once been introduced. But so far as obligation and
duty were concerned, they should have required no explicit announcement
on the subject different from what had already been given in the facts
of gospel history. When the vail was rent in twain, abolishing the
distinction at the centre, all others of an outward kind of necessity
gave way. When the great High Priest had fulfilled his work, no work
remained to be done by any other priest. The gospel of shadows was
evidently gone, the gospel of realities come. And the compliances which
the apostles generally, and Paul himself latterly made (Acts xxi.), to
humour the prejudices, and silence the senseless clamours of the Jews,
though necessary at first, were yet carried to an undue and dangerous
length. They palpably failed in Paul's case to accomplish the end in
view, and, in the case of the Jewish Christians themselves, were
attended with jealousies, self-righteous bigotry, growing feebleness,
and ultimate decay. "Before Messiah's coining, the ceremonies were as
the swaddling bands in which he was wrapt; but after it, they resembled
the linen clothes which he left in the grave. Christ was in the one,
not in the other. And using them as the Galatians did, or as the Jews
do at this day, they and their language are a lie; for they say he is
still to come who is come already. They are now beggarly elements,
having nothing of Christ, the true riches, in them." [18]
1. Matth. v. 17-19.
2. Jas. i. 25; ii. 8-12.
3. 1 Cor. ix. 21.
4. Rom. xiii. 10; Gal. v. 14.
5. Rom. iii. 21.
6. Ch. i. 9.
7. Rom. vii. 6.
8. Rom. vi. 14.
9. The work of Fraser on Sanctification, which is less known in England than it should be, is perfectly conclusive against Locke, Hammond, Whitby, and others, that the Apostle in Romans had in view the moral, rather than the ceremonial law. It is impossible, indeed, that such a notion could ever have been entertained by such men, except through strong doctrinal prejudices.
10. Rom. viii. 1; Acts xiii. 39; John v. 14.
11. It seems very strange, considering how plain and explicit the Apostle's meaning is, that the late Professor Lee of Cambridge should still say: "The main question, I think, here discussed (viz. in ch. vii.) by the Apostle is, how is a man to be justified with God?" (Dissertations, I. sec. 10.) Haldane, also, in his commentary, maintains the same obviously untenable view, as we cannot but term it. Fraser (Sanctification, on Rom. vii. 4) justly remarks, that though the similitude of marriage used by the Apostle in ch. vii, "might be explained to shew that the sinner cannot attain justification or any of its comfortable consequences by the law," yet that it is "another consequence of the marriage covenant and relation that he hath in his eye," viz. "the bringing forth of fruit unto God;" in other words, the maintaining of such holy lives as constitute our sanctification.
12. Hare's Guesses after Truth, ii. p. 3.
13. See especially Ps. i., xv., xxiv., xl., cxix.
14. Hengstenberg's Christology on Jer. xxxi. 31.
15. De Abrog. Legis, p. 72, 73.
16. Inst. B. ii. c. 7. § 17.
17. For example, Fraser on Sanct. in the introduction to explication of Rom. vii.
18. Bell on Cov. p. 140.