Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 932
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, May 8, 1870
“For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His o wn Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Romans 8:3.
EVER since man has fallen away from God, two things have been highly desirable. The one, that he should be forgiven all his offenses. The other, equally if not more important, that he should be led to hate the sin into which he has fallen and love the purity and holiness from which he has become alienated. These two disabilities must be removed, or, looking at the matter from a loftier point of view, these two purposes of Divine mercy must be accomplished together.
It were impossible to make a man happy unless both be equally and simultaneously realized. If his sins were forgiven, and yet he loved sin, his prospects were dark. Over his future the direst portents would loom. If he ceased to love sin, and yet were lying under the guilt of it, his present condition would be deeply miserable rather than happy—his conscience pure and sensitive being tortured with pangs of remorse.
By what process can the two requirements be met, or the double purpose be achieved? To use our common words, how can man be both justified and sanctified, obtain clearance from his guilt in the sight of God, and then be made holy and meet to appear in His Presence? Human reason suggests that a law should be given to man which he should keep. This has been tried, and the law which was given was the best law that could be framed. The Law of God written on the conscience, of which the Law given by Moses recorded in the book of Exodus is but a copy, is a perfect Law. There is not a command in it that could be omitted. There is not one single arbitrary precept.
The right must be true, the true must be right, and God’s Law is never otherwise than right and true. “Of Law,” said the judicious Hooker, “there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempt from her power.” If, therefore, that Law which is promulgated from Heaven should fail to make men what they should be, the fault will not be in the Law, but in the man. As the text says, it was “weak through the flesh.”
Because of our flesh and our tendency to sin, our weakness and our defilement of nature, it could not do what, indeed, God never intended it should do—but what some have thought Law might do—repair the breach and to renovate the depraved. The principle of Law, which is, “Do this and you shall be rewarded,” or, “Do that and you shall be punished,” never can by any means achieve either of these two purposes. The Law cannot forgive past sin. It evidently has nothing to do with that question. The Law says, “The soul that sins, it shall die.” It can execute the sentence, but it can do no more. It ceases to be Law if it lays aside the sword and does not exact its own penalty.
Yet it has been thought that surely Law might make men love holiness, albeit experience and observation prove that it never has that effect. Very often men have needed nothing more than the knowledge of sin to enamor them to it, and they have loved sin all the better for knowing it to be sin. The Apostle Paul tells us that he had not known lust if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” There was a citizen of Gaunt who had never been outside the city walls. For some reason or other the magistrate passed an order that he should not go outside. Strange to tell, up to the moment that the command had passed, the man had been perfectly easy and never thought of passing the line. But as soon as ever he was forbidden to do it, he pined, and sickened, and even died moaning over the restriction.
If a man sees a thing to be law, he wants to break that law. Our nature is so evil, that forbid us to do a thing, and at once we want to do the thing that is forbidden, and in many minds the principle of Law, instead of leading to purity has even offered opportunities for greater impurity. Beside, although you may point out the way of uprightness to a man, and tell him what is right and what is wrong with all the wisdom and force of counsel and caution, unless you can give him a heart to choose the right, and a heart to love the true, you have not done much for him.
This is just the province of Law. It can write out its precepts on the brazen tablets, and it can brandish its fiery sword, and say, “Do this or else be punished,” but man, carnal man, only wraps himself the more closely in his self-conceit, and perseveres the more doggedly in his obstinate rebellion. He defies God, defers to his own reprobate mind, goes on in sin, and waxes worse and worse, knowing the judgment threatened, yet committing the transgressions prohibited. And he takes pleasure in those that do such things as his benefit companions. Because of the malignity, as well as the infirmity of our flesh, the mere principle of Law will never do anything to purify or ennoble our moral nature. It has been tried by eminent teachers and social reformers.