Man under law (converted or unconverted, regenerate or not) is lost, unless Christ be a mere maker-up of deficiency. For the law must press a man for what he is himself, if he be under it. “As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse,” —not as many as have violated, but as many as are on that ground. “They that be of faith are blessed.” Were it blessing in keeping the law, and curse in violating it, all would be infallibly under the curse; for man is a sinner; the regenerate man (the flesh being in him) fails: if he is under the law, he is under the curse. No doubt, abstractedly, the law is good; but man is a sinner in nature before he gets it, and is necessarily and wholly lost under it. In vain he says he is regenerate. The law knows no such distinction: it asks, Are you such as I require? No, I am not, says the regenerate man (who indeed alone truly says so). Then, says the law, I curse you. But, you say, I am not under law for justification, but as a rule. But I curse you, says the law, because you have not kept the rule. It cannot do anything else. It is in vain to say, We do not put man under it for justification: it puts him under itself for condemnation, if he has anything to say to it.
I quite admit that the law (taken in its highest character in the commandments the Lord extracts from the Old Testament, as that on which law and prophets hung) would be the rule of existence and joy on earth, if man were not a sinner; but then his redemption would not be necessary. Now, he is a sinner, and the law cannot be a rule of life to a sinner; not because it is not holy, just and good, but because man is a sinner. Viewed in his new nature, man fulfills the law; for love is the fulfilling of the law. But this does not put him under it. The reasoning of the apostle is, that you need not put him under it (for he alone who was not under it in spirit kept it); that, as an administered code, it was the strength of sin—entered, when man was already a sinner, that the offense might abound; that sin, taking occasion by it, wrought all manner of concupiscence, and rendered sin exceeding sinful: in fine, that we could not have two husbands at a time, nor seek blessing on two principles; that we are not under law, but under grace; and, if led by the Spirit, we are not under law, Christ having delivered us from it; that we are dead to the law by the body of Christ.
In a word, the scripture testifies, that, put a man under the law, and he is (sinner or saint) a cursed, dead, condemned creature; that it is a ministration of death and of condemnation. The law knows no mercy, and God's holiness can allow no mitigation of its terms. I cannot have the two husbands; dead to the one, I am married to the other—even to Christ risen. In His death, which infinitely magnified it, as in life He honored it, I am dead to it, though He fulfills its principles in me, as a new creature, by having taken me from under it by redemption. He who says, “I am under law,” denies, in principle, the redemption of Christ. Scripture speaks of Christians fulfilling it without (yea, by not) being under it. In a word, the Christian, viewed as a new creature, accomplishes the law; for he loves his neighbor, and does no ill to him; but he is not placed under law, for, if he were, he would be condemned by it. He sees that Christ, alive on earth, was under it, in death bore its curse, and in the power of redemption delivered us from it; while, as risen, He communicates a nature to us, which delights in and does the law, but does not put the believer under it.
As regards the Sabbath, the seventh day was the rest of God in creation; and subsequently, when Israel was put under the law to live by it and be blest in creation (though faith had then better things in view), it was given as a sign of the covenant with them. But we believe and have learned that creation is ruined; and judgment and redemption have excluded us from it, and taken us victoriously out of it, into a new creation. Hence Christ passed the Sabbath in the grave: it was buried, and our hopes of blessing here with Him in His grave. He claimed lordship over it in title of his person. Sin had spoiled creation; we are a new creation; the old creation is judged, and Christ is risen into a new one, of which He is the head—into a new condition of man. Into this in spirit we are brought, as hereafter into our true rest in glory. Hence the resurrection of Christ is the day which marks this out to us—not the close of creation labor, as the seventh was, but the beginning of resurrection, and new-creation blessing.
The seventh day was the Sabbath, as God's rest after the creation. This is not our rest. He has said, “Arise and depart: it is polluted.” The first day distinctively (and not the seventh) is the day marked out to us. The labor to prove it a seventh (or, as some have done, the seventh) is unintelligent labor to destroy the distinctive Christian position, which has its birthplace of blessings in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ on the first (not the seventh) day of the week. The seventh was rest according to the law, and looked to man to work aright, and find rest he could not. Redemption has brought him into it; but that is in the power of resurrection, the beginning of the new creation.
Hence I believe the answer of the Lord when challenged with breaking the Sabbath: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” We cannot rest either in sin or in misery. The first day of the week He entered into the fruits of His work. The Sabbath, then, was the rest of creation, and the sign of the covenant with Israel. Our testimony is, that both have wholly failed, and there is no rest in them: the grave of Christ has closed that whole scene and condition of existence, and begun a new one, in which we have a part.
But the first day of the week is marked out to the Christian, not indeed as law, but as blessing. Christ rose, Christ met His disciples on it; and again the same the week following. On the first day of the week the disciples met to break bread; on the first day they were to lay by their profits for the poor saints; and, in Rev. 1, it is definitely called “the Lord's day” As such I own it; but I do not, with human traditions, abandon the foundations of my hope in seeking rest in the creation in which Christ has been rejected, nor in the covenant of the law of which He bore the curse. The Lord's day is the first day, not the seventh, and rests on redemption basis, which declares entire failure of the other rest. Traditional views are, in these points, ignorance of the very ground on which Christianity rests. It may be added that, in accomplishment, the seventh day and the first prefigure the earthly and the heavenly rest respectively in the millennial period.