CHAPTER X.

SALVATION IS NOT BY OUR OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW.

HERE are two capital errors respecting the law.

THE

One maintains that we are justified by it. The other asserts that we are under no obligation to obey it. The last of these will be considered hereafter. The first now claims our attention.

The following things are made remarkably clear in God's word.

I. ALL MEN ARE SINNERS. In proof of this proposition we have the unanswered and unanswerable argument of the Apostle Paul in the first three chapters of his epistle to the Romans. In the first chapter he proves that all the Gentiles are sinners. In the second, he shows that the Jews are involved in the same condemnation. In the third, he shows that all men indiscriminately have offended God, maintaining that, "There is none righteous, no, not one." This great argument is but the summing up of irrefragable statements found in all the Scriptures, and confirmed by universal observation.

II. MAN IS UNDER A CURSE. The reason is because he is a transgressor. This was declared at the giving of the law. Moses said, "Behold, I set before you

this day, a blessing and a curse; a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: and a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day." Deut. xi. 26–28. "The curse of the Lord is

in the house of the wicked." Prov. iii. 33.

"The

curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him." Dan. ix. 11. "Ye are cursed with a curse." Mal. iii. 9. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. Gal. iii. 10.

III. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE LAW. The Scriptures abundantly declare that the law is good. Rom. vii. 16; 1 Tim. i. 8. "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." Gal. iii. 21. "The law was weak through the flesh;" Rom. viii. 3, not through any defect inherent in itself.

IV. YET JUSTIFICATION BY THE LAW IS IMPOSSIBLE. It is often and expressly so declared. "By the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight;" "The law worketh wrath;" "Now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held;" "Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ;" "Israel which followed after the law of righteousness hath not attained to the law of righteousness; because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law;" "A man is not justified by the works of the law;" "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain;" "That no man is justified by the law in the sight of

God, it is evident." Rom. iii. 20, iv. 15, vii. 4, 6, ix. 31, 32. Gal. ii. 16, 21, iii. 11.

V. THE SCRIPTURES REVEAL AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT PLAN OF JUSTIFICATION. They say, We are "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." "The promise is of faith, that it might be by grace." "There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." "A man is justified by the faith of Jesus Christ." "The life which we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God." "The just shall live by faith." Rom. iii. 24, iv. 16, viii. 1; Gal. ii. 16, 20; Gal. iii. 11; Hab. ii. 4; Rom. i. 17. This scheme of pardoning the guilty and accepting them as righteous through the merits of the Lord Jesus suits us exactly. Nor is this mere theory. It enters into the very life of religious experience. The Rev. Jotham Sewell says, "When I was not very far from twenty-one years of age, I read a sermon which exposed the insufficiency and folly of self-righteousness. I felt the force of the reasoning, and was convinced that I had been self-righteous. I resolved that I would be so no more, but would try to trust in Christ. I then thought that I had freed myself from this sin, though I had no idea that I was convicted. Not long after, in giving a reason for the hope that he was a Christian, I heard a man express the conviction, that, while in secret and in his family before conversion, he was hypocritical and self-righteous. I thought with myself, shall I ever have to say as much as that man says? I am not convicted; but if I should be, whatever I may have to throw away, it will not be self-righteousness; for I fancied that I was already free from that; so

6

blind was I to my real condition! I afterwards saw that I had made a righteousness of my resolution, that I would not be self-righteous! So true it is that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.' In like manner spoke that godly minister, Owen Stockton, of Ipswich: "I find, that though in my judgment and profession, I acknowledge Christ to be my righteousness and peace; yet upon examination I observe that my heart hath done quite another thing, and that secretly I have gone about to establish my own righteousness, and have derived my comfort and peace from my own actings." Luther: "If I were able to keep the whole moral law, I would not trust to this for justification."

To the truly pious and humble child of God, however simple or youthful, there is nothing more unpleasant than the suggestion of the wicked one or of ignorant guides that we can commend ourselves to God by our own works. A lovely young female, whose memoir has been printed, though not published, has lately departed this life in the triumph of faith. One of her dying testimonies was, "I would not like to think of my sufferings having any thing to do with my going to heaven, as a cause. If I ever stand before God, it will be because Jesus Christ has redeemed me by his own blood-his ransom availed. God was satisfied-I am saved by him entirely." The best practical writers of all ages have warned men against seeking justification by the law. Charnock: "Affecting to stand by a righteousness of our own is natural Adam was to have lived upon his of innocence; since

to us.

own righteousness, in the state

we are fallen this relic of nature is in us to desire to

rise by our own strength. We would find matter of acceptance and acquittance in ourselves. ... What pains had the apostle to work the Romans and the Galatians from their own righteousness. A desire of a legal justification is inbred. An imper

fect righteousness cannot afford a perfect peace; the righteousness of a sinful nature is not the righteousness of a pure law."

John Owen: "Take heed of a degeneration into self-righteousness. The way is narrow and strait that lies between the indispensable necessity of holiness and its influence into our righteousness. The righteousness of Christ is utterly a strange thing to the best of unbelievers; and this puts them by all means upon the setting up of their own. Rom. x. 3."

Willard: "The fall hath utterly cut man off from ever obtaining life by the law, as a Covenant."

John Newton: "It is not a lawful use of the law to seek justification and acceptance with God by our obedience to it; because it is not appointed for this end, or capable of answering it in our circumstances. The very attempt is a daring impeachment of the goodness and wisdom of God; for if righteousness could come by the law, then Christ has died in vain ; Gal. ii. 21; iii. 21; so that such a hope is not only groundless but sinful; and, when persisted in under the light of the gospel, is no less than a wilful rejection of the grace of God."

Colquhoun: "The great error of the Galatians was this: they did not believe that the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone was sufficient to entitle them to the justification of life; and there