According to scripture, law must always have its effect as declared in the word of God, always necessarily upon whoever is under it; but then that effect is always, according to scripture, condemnation and death, and nothing else, upon a being who has in him a lust or a fault. Thus it knows no mercy, but must pronounce a curse upon every one who does not continue in all things written in it; and hence whosoever it of the works of the law is under a curse. Now, in fact, the Christian has sin in him as a human being, and, alas! fails; but if law applies to him, he is under the curse; for it brings a curse on every one who sins. Do I enfeeble its authority? I maintain it, and establish it in the fullest way. I ask, Have you to say to the law? Then you are under a curse: no escaping, no exemption. Its authority and claim must be maintained—its righteous exactions made good. Have you failed? Yes, you have. You are under the curse. No, you say, but I am a Christian; the law is still binding upon me, but I am not under a curse. Has not the law pronounced a curse upon one who fails? Yes. You are under it; you have failed, and are not cursed after all! Its authority is not maintained; for you are under it, it has cursed you, and you are not cursed. If you had said, I was under it and failed, and Christ died and bore its curse; and now, as redeemed, I am on another footing, not under law but under grace, its authority is maintained. But if you are put back again under law (after Christ has died and risen again, and you are in Christ) and you fail and come under no curse, its authority is destroyed; for it pronounces a curse, and you are not cursed at all. The man who puts a Christian under law destroys the authority of the law, or puts a Christian under the curse; for in many things we all offend. He fancies he establishes law, but destroys its authority. He only establishes the full immutable authority of law, who declares that a Christian is not under it at all and therefore cannot be cursed by its just and holy curse.
What the measure of Christian conduct is I shall show from scripture before I close. I only remark now that, in point of fact, what we specially need is not the rule of right and wrong, though that be most useful and necessary and in its place, but motive and power for our new nature. The law gives neither. The scripture declares it is an occasion for sin's working concupiscence in me, that the motions of sin are by it, that it is the strength of sin, and that sin shall not have dominion over me, because I am not under it but under grace. Let a bowl lie reversed on the table: who thinks of it? Say, “No one is to know what is under it;” and who is not wishing to know? The law is the occasion to lust. If we only remember that the apostle is speaking of law—is speaking of its effects on every one that is under it, and particularly on Christians putting themselves under it, after they are Christians, and not merely (though he does that fully) of being justified by it, but of its own proper and necessary effect in all cases, and the question, if scripture be an authority, is soon decided.
How, then, is a conscientious man delivered from the law without any allowance of sin? First, they that sin without law shall perish without law, so that he is none the better for setting aside the law in order to sin with impunity. Secondly, the law is no help against sin. Sin has not dominion over us, according to the apostle, because we are not under law but under grace. What, then, does deliver from sin and law? It is death, and then newness of life in resurrection. We are in Christ, not in Adam.
Let us first see the legitimate effect of law, for it is good if a man use it lawfully. It condemns sins. But known in its spiritual power, it does more: it condemns sin. It first condemns all transgressions of its own commandments. Here, as to outward conduct, a man, as Paul, may escape its fangs in the conscience. But, known spiritually, it condemns lusts. But lusts I have. Yet I see the law is right. I am self-condemned. It judges the working of my nature in lusts, but gives no new one. It condemns my will, claiming absolute obedience as due to God; and, if my will be right, I discover that under law 1 have no power. How to accomplish that which is good I find not. Acts, lusts, will—all I am morally is judged and condemned to death, and I have no force to accomplish what is good. Such is the effect of the law on one when it does not take effect in the conscience. It kills me. I have, as to my conscience, died before God under it. But, then, law applies to man as a child of Adam living in flesh. It condemns and brings death into me in this way, because I am such. As such I have died under it; but then, that to which it applied is dead under it, and it applies no more. A man is put into jail for thieving or murder; he dies there. The law can do no more, the life it dealt with is gone. I, through law, am dead to law, that I might live to God. As regards my conscience before God, it has killed me. It can do no more. But there is more than this, because I got at the intelligence of all this by faith, by being a Christian, and could not else thus see or reason on it. Hence I am dead to the law by the body of Christ. The death it sentenced me to in my conscience has fallen on another. I have died with Him, with Christ. The sin has been thus put away from my conscience. Had this come upon me, it would have been everlasting misery. But, Christ having put Himself in this place, it is everlasting love: and I have a right to reckon myself dead, because Christ has died, and I have really received Him into my heart as life; and He is really my life, who died for me and rose again. I am alive by the life of Him who is a life-giving Spirit, and hence have the right and am bound to account myself dead, since He in whom I live did die. On this the apostle founds all his reasonings and exhortations, as to sin and the law. He looks at the Christian as dead and risen again, because his true life, his “I,” the life he has got, and in which he lives as a Christian, is Christ who has died and is alive again. After saying, “I, through law, am dead to law,” he adds, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” “If ye have died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living (alive) in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” “for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Let us see how he applies this doctrine to sin and the law. In Rom. 5 he had applied the resurrection to justification. Christ (chap. 4:25) was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. It is justification of life; not merely the putting away of sins, but the putting us in a quite new accepted place before God. This connection of life, the power of life in Christ, and justification in Him that is risen after dying for us, it is (and not the law) which, in the apostle's doctrine, assured also godliness. (Chap. 6:2.) “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” We cannot if we are dead to it. But such is our place in Christ dead and risen, and that a real thing, by having a wholly new life in Christ who is our life. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin.” Then he shows how Christ died and is risen again and lives to God, and adds, “Reckon ye yourselves likewise to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Let not sin therefore reign,” be continues, “in your mortal bodies,” adding what I have already quoted: “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law but under grace.” He then refers to the abuse the flesh would make of this; but, instead of insisting that the moral law was binding, shows them to be freed from sin, and servants to righteousness and to God, yielding their members servants to righteousness unto holiness. Thus, by being dead and alive in the life of Christ, are we freed from sin.
In chapter 7 again the apostle applies the same truth more elaborately to the law. You cannot, he insists, have two husbands at the same time. You cannot be under obligation to Christ and the law. Well, how is freedom to be obtained for the man under the law? He dies in that in which he was held. The law could only assert its claim on the man as a living child of Adam. The “law has power over a man as long as he lives;” but I am dead to law by the body of Christ; the bond to the law has absolutely, wholly, and necessarily ceased, for the person is dead; and the law had power over him only as long as he lived. Hence he says, in such strong and simple language, When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law. The law applies to man in the flesh; but we have died, we are not in the flesh. When we were, it applied. It applied to flesh, provoked the sin, and condemned the sinner. But he died under it, when he was under it—died under it with Christ, and lives delivered from it in a new life, which is Christ risen out of the reach and place of law. He is not tied to the old husband; death has severed the bond, his own death and crucifixion with Christ; for he has owned that that was his affair as a sinner. He is married to another—Christ, who is risen from the dead that he may bring forth fruit to God. He is not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of Christ dwell in him. If not, he is none of His.
You will say, Yes; but the flesh is still there, though he has a right and ought to reckon himself dead; and, therefore, he needs the law, not to put away sin, but that it may not have dominion. But I read, “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law.” When I was in the flesh, the law was the occasion of the working of sin in my members. I have died in that, and the law cannot pass death. Godliness is in the new life, which lives by the faith of the Son of God. It is death—conscious death—with Christ, and my being in Him, so that I am no longer in the flesh at all, but have Him for my life, which is the scriptural way of godliness—righteousness, with its fruit unto holiness—not the being under the law.
Living in a risen Christ, as one who has been taken out of the reach of law by death—that is Christian life. The measure of that walk is Christ, and nothing else. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk as he walked.” Let us consult scripture as to this point—the scripture rule of life. I have given it. We ought so to walk as Christ walked. Again, it is written— “He has left us an example, that we should follow his steps.” He is life, motive, and example too; He lives in us, and the life which we live in the flesh we live by the faith of Him. He has trodden the path before us. He is all, and in all. It is as beholding in His face unveiled the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3) we are changed into the same image from glory to glory; and thus, He being engraved on the heart by the Spirit of the living God, we become the epistle of Christ. (2 Cor. 3) And mark, it is there in contrast with the law on the tables of stone. We are to put on Christ, to put on the new man. This goes so far that it is said, “Hereby perceive we love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John) The law knew no such principle, no such obligation as this. Was it the law which made Christ come and lay down His life for us? Does not this example show the extreme poverty of the thought that the law is the rule or measure of our conduct? The truth is this—there were two parts of Christ's life. First, man's obedience to God's will, which itself went much farther than law; for law did not require the path of grace and devoted ness to man in which Christ walked. He did, as under the law, magnify and make it honorable. But there was another—the manifestation of God Himself in grace and graciousness. This is not law; it is God in goodness, not man in responsibility. It is mischievous to confound the two.
Will any one say, But we are not called upon, and cannot be, to follow Christ in the latter? I reply, We are expressly called upon to do so, and never to follow Him under law. What scripture says on this last point is, that if I love my neighbor as myself, I shall fulfill the law, so that I have no need to be under it; and, again, that in walking after the Spirit, the righteousness of the law will be fulfilled in me, and produce what the law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh. The Spirit will produce fruits against which there is no law. It is a new nature—guided by the Spirit and formed by the word, growing up to the Head in all things—which walks worthy of the Lord. The commands of law do not produce this; but looking through grace at Christ does change us into the same image. But in this path of Christ manifesting God, He is expressly set before us as our example. “Be ye followers [imitators] of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ has loved us, and given himself for us as a sacrifice and an offering to God of a sweet smelling savor.” We are called upon to be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, not according to law. We are renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us. See this character described. “Put on as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another; if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” If any one desires to have a complete exhibition of Christian life, the life of Christ risen, in us, let him read Col. 3:1-171If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. 5Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: 7In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. 8But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. 9Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: 11Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. 12Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; 13Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. 14And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. 15And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 17And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Colossians 3:1‑17).
I believe I have said enough and quoted enough to show the mind of scripture on the point that engages us—what its views of law and of its operation and effect are, and what the Christian rule of life is too, of one who has died with Christ, and is associated with Him risen, and lives through Him. Law is the measure of man's responsibility as such to God. It is perfect as such and no more; it could not have been more than the measure of man's walk. Christ was perfect in this as in everything; but He went farther, and displayed God Himself in His own sovereign grace and goodness, and we ought to follow Him here, as in His perfect obedience to God. He, and He alone, is our pattern and example, and nothing else. He is the object for the heart to rest on, and is to govern it, and to which it is to grow like, and nothing else. He is the motive and spring of conduct in us, as well as its perfect model, which the law cannot be; for it is not life, and neither gives nor feeds it.