[Dear reader, I would refer you to an article in our January number headed “Love not law, the motive power for a holy life,” and request you to read it; for though printed then, for a special purpose, this is the place it naturally comes in. Having read this, we now proceed with the exposition].
“Now we know that the law is good if any one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that law has not its application to a righteous person, but to the lawless and insubordinate, to the impious and sinful, to the unholy and profane, to smiters of fathers, and smiters of mothers, to murderers; to fornicators, Sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and if any other thing is opposed to sound teaching according to the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted (1 Tim. 1:8-11).
The law is good, that is beautiful―just the right thing in the right place (καλος)―when applied to the characters enumerated. We, Christians, know it would be an unsuited application of it to apply it to “a righteous person.” The law which is chiefly prohibitory and condemnatory is not suited to a Christian with a new nature that has spiritual tastes for the very opposite of those things the law prohibits, and who, found as he is in Christ risen, cannot be cursed, for the Spirit testifies “there is therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” The law could neither stop the sinning, condemn the sin without condemning the sinner, nor ensure obedience; but all these have been accomplished by Christ dead and risen proclaimed in the Gospel; and therefore the law is not needed to accomplish that which is done already. “I through the law am dead to the law that I may live unto God;” and this is how it has come about―“I have been crucified with Christ―and no longer live I, but Christ liveth in me.”
In virtue of Christ’s blood-shedding in atonement I have remission of sins: in virtue of Christ’s death and by being planted with Him in the likeness of His death and also of His resurrection, my standing is changed from being that of a fallen child of Adam in a state of sin, to that of one who shares the standing in risen life’ of the second Man―the last Adam risen from the dead; again by identification with Christ crucified, I have got rid of the old life and old man, bides having a new self in Christ who is my life.
The clearness with which God teaches us the total end of our sin, our standing, life and self in Christ’s death and cross is very remarkable; so that it is only a man who does not know the nature, reality, greatness, and thoroughness of God’s work in Christ, removing us outside of the sin-sphere, the law-sphere, the world-sphere, the self-sphere, and placing us in the Christ-sphere, would think of placing Christians under law. Law has not its application to a righteous man; and Christians are not only “made righteousness of God in Him” but “the righteous requirement of law (δικαίωμα) is fulfilled” in such only as are not under law, “who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:4). The law applies to the unrighteous; but Christians are no longer such. It applies to those who are alive in the world; but Christians “no longer live there;” for “ye have died and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:2). The law is not used “lawfully” if it is applied to Christians so as to put them under it; or to deal with them as if they were “alive in the world” or “lawless.” “We know that the law is good if any one uses it lawfully” i.e., agreeably to the design of it. He speaks of the use of the law in teaching, not of the law’s intrinsic excellence, when he says “we know that the law is good.” Law out of its place is bad. Its application, not its essence, is in view. The word here used for good is different from that used in Romans 7, when the law is said to be good; there it is its essential nature: here the propriety of its application. These two words are largely employed in this Epistle: good as a quality (αγαθος) occurs in the following places in 1 Tim. 1:5-19; 2:10; 5:10 good as a propriety or a fitting thing (καλος) 1 Tim. 1:8-18; 2:3; 3:11-13; 4:4-6, twice; verses; 5:4, 10, 25; 6:12, twice; 13, 18, 19. The last, indicative of that which is fitting, is that which preponderates, and which characterizes this epistle.
The fitting life “according” to the gospel of the glory of Christ,”―the proper conduct produced by wholesome teaching (“sound doctrine”) is the “piety” inculcated and contemplated in “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” “Sound” or healthy as applied to teaching is peculiar to the pastoral epistles― 1 Timothy 1:10; 6:3-4; 2 Timothy 1:13; 4:3; Tim. 1:9-13; 1:2-8.
The law is linked with the things it condemns: it is fitting that it should be so and condemn them, but not that it should be applied to “a righteous man.” That was the law-teachers’ error. The Apostle gives a list of characters to whom law most fittingly applies. There are six classes of the unrighteous adduced.
1. Lawless and insubordinate.
2. Impious and sinful,
3. Unholy and profane.
4. Smiters of fathers and smiters of mothers, murderers.
5. Fornicators, Sodomites, kidnappers.
6. Liars, perjurers.
7. General evil: ―Everything opposed to sound teaching.
“By the law is the knowledge of sin,” and it is therefore fitting it should have its application to sinners, not to the righteous.” The law is good if a man who is teaching “uses it lawfully,” by directing its keen edge against such wickedness as the above list indicates.
The apostle Paul, when in Romans 3:20, he writes, “By law is knowledge of sin,” does not go on at once to spew how it works so until he has first brought out grace, righteousness, and life in a risen Christ; and then in Romans 7. he expounds and illustrates his thesis, and in so doing shows law in its application to a guilty man,― it kills him in his conscience, see verses 7-13; and then he shows the effect of law on an undelivered man,―it brings him to despair of self-strength for deliverance, and then, as he cries, “O wretched man!” he also continues “who shall deliver me?” when he finds deliverance in Christ and becoming then and thus free in Him (Rom. 8) he leads thereafter a life of practical righteousness under the grace of the Holy Ghost―not by fear of consequences as under law, but as “fruit of the light” ― “fruit of the Spirit:” for “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control; against such things there is no law”―(Gal. 5:22.)―so that it would be a wrong application of the law to give it an application to “a righteous man,” who is bearing such a beautiful grape-cluster of the “fruit of the Spirit.”
“And if any other thing is opposed to sound teaching,” the law has its application to it, let it be ever so small an offense: for although the gross sins against God and society are mentioned, the law condemns all the lesser sins too. It applies, as the same apostle informs us it did in his own case, even to the inner man, for he writes to the Romans, ― “I had not known sin (i.e., had conscience of lust) unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
The teaching of the grace of God has regard to every part of man’s nature, heart, conscience, mind, and body. “For the grace of God which carries with it salvation for all men has appeared, teaching us that having denied impiety and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, justly, and piously in the present course of things”― (Titus 2:11-12). Grace teaches the saints how to live: we do not fall back on the teaching of law as if it could bring out morality comparable to that of the gospel. “Sound teaching” for the conduct of our daily life is largely given in the Apostolic epistles: even those which begin, as Ephesians and Colossians, with the highest Christian doctrine as to Christ and our place in Him and our portion with Him, descend to the minutest injunction to act a Christian part in all the varied relations and spheres of every-day life. Grace teaches its own morality in a deeper way; and it acts with better moral effect than law could do. Of course we distinguish between the Contents of the law and its principle: and grace may use its contents (Eph. 6:1-2) while not admitting its principle: for as to our relationship with God and the new life of holiness “We are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14).
It would be an entire misinterpretation of the passage, to say that in our preaching we are not to use all the word of God, the contents of the law as well as other parts; and if we know the contents of the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, we will be able to wield the contents of the law with all the more mighty effect “as a sword for the conscience”: for we stand in the light of “that glory of the blessed God,” which has not tolerated one particle of evil but has been fully satisfied by the death for sin of the Lord Jesus. God visited sin with its due punishment on Christ, and He more than glorified all that God is about sin. Hence a preacher standing in the full light of this glory of God made good on Calvary as to man’s sin, can use with the mightiest effect all that the law says against sin. He is the only man who can do it. He would be a poor preacher of the gospel who could not wield the law with superior power and intelligence against all those things the gospel forbids; but he would be a sorry teacher of the truths of the Christian faith and life who gave the law its application among the saints; for while law has its use among them, it has its fitting application only among sinners, condemning all that is contrary to healthy moral teaching “according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.”