FEW things can be more opposed to each other than “law” and “grace.” Law demands; grace gives. Law says, You must love God; grace says, God loves you. Law says, Do and live; grace brings life to do. Law says, Work in order to be righteous; grace brings righteousness without works. Law works condemnation; grace brings salvation. Those who are of the works of the law are under the curse; those who are objects of divine grace are blessed for evermore. It spoils both law and gospel to endeavor to mix them, and the mixture is poisonous to souls. The “grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ” is very distinct from “the law which was given by Moses.” Hence it is said of believers, “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom: 6:14.)
As another has said, “The law gave to man a perfect and divine rule for his conduct upon the earth. But it never took him up into heaven...... The contents of the law are perfect in their place, and for their object. It tells us what the right state of a creature is, and it forbids the wrong that flesh is inclined to.... To command a person to do a thing supposes that he is not doing it, nor about to do it, without a command. If we add to this, that nine out of the ten commandments forbid positive sins and evil dispositions, because men are disposed to them, or there were no need to prohibit them, we shall find that the very nature and existence of a law, which prescribes the good on God’s authority, supposes the evil in man’s nature which is opposed to it This is a deplorable truth, take either aspect of the case. You cannot command love, that is, produce it by commanding it, and you cannot put out lusts by forbidding them to a nature which has them as nature. Yet this is what the law does, and must do, if God give one. It proves that what is forbidden is sin, and that it is in man to be forbidden; but it never takes it away. It prescribes good in the creature, but does not produce it. It shows what is right on earth in the creature, but how far is it from taking man into heavenly places! It can have no pretension to it....
“Further, it shows no good in him as an object before his soul. I repeat, to make the distinction clear, it requires good in him — loving God and his neighbor, for example; but it presents no good to him. There is no revealed object to produce good, nor be man’s good in him in’ living power. It works, therefore, wrath. Where no law is there is no transgression.
“Now, grace works quite otherwise; it does not require good where it is not, though it may produce it. It does not condemn the wicked, but forgives and puts away their sin. It presents to us an object, God Himself; but God come near to us in love. It does more. It communicates what is good. It is not a law. I repeat, it does not require good where it is not; it produces it. It does not condemn the wicked, but it forgives and puts away their wickedness....
“The death of Christ has closed for faith the existence of the ‘old man,’ the flesh, the first Adam — life in which we stood as responsible before God, and whose place Christ took for us in grace. ‘What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.’ (Romans 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3).) ‘In that He died, He died unto sin once; in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.’ (Romans 6:1010For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans 6:10).)
“ ... Upon the grounds of its responsibility (the old man) we are wholly lost.... But the whole thing is done away with for the believer on the cross. He is crucified with Christ, nevertheless lives, yet not he, but Christ lives in him. If the cross has proved that in flesh there is nothing but sin and hatred against God, it has put away the sin it has proved. All that is gone. The life is gone. If a guilty man die in prison, what can the law do more against him? The life in which he had sinned, and to which his guilt attached itself, is gone. With us, too, it is gone; for Christ has died, willingly, no doubt, but by the judicial dealing of God with the sin which He bore for us. If we are alive, we are alive now on a new footing — before God, ALIVE IN CHRIST. The old things are passed away; there is a new creation; we are created again in Christ Jesus.”
“Rise, my soul! behold ‘tis
Jesus,
Jesus fills thy wondering eyes;
See Him now, in glory seated,
Where thy sins no more can rise.
“There, in righteousness transcendent,
Lo! He doth in heaven appear,
Shows the Blood of His atonement
As thy title to be there.”