It is astonishing how hard it is to get the heart of man to believe in the efficacy of the work of Christ. Even in the case of those who have felt their need of it, the simplicity is unseizable; and, therefore, their power is lost. There is liberty before God; and power where there is liberty. It is of this full and blessed liberty which belongs to the believer in Christ, that it is so hard to persuade. I am sure the more I go on, the more I see how little those who believe enjoy the full and blessed grace in which God has set them.
When once we have seen our entire ruin, and are cast entirely on what God is, and what God has done, then the simplicity of the gospel is apprehended. But not till then. Here it is called that which remaineth. And truly this is what conforms to Christ, as the last verse shows. No responsibility can bring to this. How can I be an epistle of Christ, if I am trying to get to Him? It is Christ that is ministered; and through the ministration of Christ we are put in the presence of God, without fear or torment, so to enjoy the glory as to reflect it. l t is Christ glorified in Heaven, who is thus engraven on the heart, by the Holy Ghost.
Now what is the Christ thus ministered? A christian is a person who carries Christ graven on his heart before the world. What is this Christ? Is it a Christ graven on stones? No, that was on the outside. When God puts man under responsibility He gives a rule outside men. Christ even, as an example, was outside of man. He was perfection; but I am broken heart because I am not it. But if Christ is written on my heart, I am it.
Where the gospel is presented in its simplicity, there is great plainness of speech. Nothing can be simpler in itself than the gospel. Nothing simpler than this: you are lost. Nothing simpler than God so loved us as to send His Son to die for us, that we might live through Him. But what the apostle is doing here is showing what men are doing, —that they are mixing up law and grace; not taking up pure law, but a mixture of law and grace. And that is done in two ways: in the way the natural man takes it up; and in the way the quickened man takes it up. Pure law no man would take up. At bottom no man would pretend to stand by it. So they say that God is merciful. But mercy with them, is God's treating sin as lightly as they do. A quickened person will not go so far; yet in his case the mixing up of law and grace is far deeper and more subtle.
When Moses came down the first time his face did not shine. Then it was pure law. But when he came down the second time, the skin of his face shone, and Aaron and the children of Israel were afraid to come nigh him. Now it was on this second occasion that the Lord proclaimed His name-" The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, and that will by no means clear the guilty." That is what men say they wish to stand on. But that is precisely what they cannot stand on. True there is the revelation " forgiving iniquity," &c., but Moses brought back the law, and the authority of God's law cannot be given up. That is what men want. They want to use the mercy of God to weaken the authority of His law. But this will never do. He will never weaken the authority of His law. If one ray of the glory of God comes in on the principle of law, it will terrify you. Israel could not look at it. Moses said, "If Thou wilt forgive their sin;-and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written." But God answered, " the man that sins, him I will blot out." You must either destroy the authority of the law, or rest under death and judgment.
But the moment I am brought, in my conscience, to bow to the condemnation which is my due, and so am cast entirely on God, I find that what the law could not do, God has done for me by the death of His dear Son. Now I get two things in the ministration of Christ: righteousness and the Holy Ghost. "And where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." Thus I find that God can meet me in my sin; that God is so entirely above sin, that He can meet me in my sin, in order to this wondrous deliverance. One thing is needed to understand it, and that is confession. T. G. O. T.