Dear Brother,—In the present confusion of thought throughout Christendom, scarce any subject is less understood according to God. So it was even in apostolic days through Jewish tradition, as Timothy was told (1 Tim. 1:7, 87Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. 8But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; (1 Timothy 1:7‑8)): how much greater is the darkness, now that men have corrupted the gospel and more and more lose its light! The views, of which you send a specimen, illustrate the value of the warning. You yourself reject what the young man most contended for; you believe, as scripture teaches, that we are under not law but grace, and not for justification only, but emphatically as set free from sin and made servants to God. Rom. 6 beyond doubt treats of Christian walk, not of pardon, and lays it down authoritatively that sin shall not have dominion over us, for we are not under law but under grace. And 1 Cor. 9:20, 2120And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; 21To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. (1 Corinthians 9:20‑21) formally excludes that for which it is so often unintelligently cited. For the apostle is careful (in speaking of the gracious elasticity of his service “to those under law, as under law,") to say “not being myself under law,” in order that he might gain those under law. The omission of the clause here printed in italics is a defect of high moment; yet was it unsupplied in the A. V. as many may still overlook its insertion in the R. V. on authority which no scholar ought to dispute.
The very phrase “moral law” indicates how little the essayist, or his valued editor, appreciated the scriptural truth. For the sanctity of the seventh day as the sabbath, fundamental as it is made in the Bible, was of God's injunction, and not discoverable from conscience like the other nine words. And it is chaos itself to confound Adam unfallen under prohibition of the tree of knowledge with Israel under the law, already fallen, having the knowledge of good and evil, and disposed to violate every commandment of God. Innocence once lost is never regained. Grace brings in a far better thing in Christ; but the evil is still there within, even if faith preserves the believer from yielding and strengthens him to walk in the Spirit. Law has not its application to a righteous person, as the apostle ruled, but to lawless and insubordinate, to impious and sinful, to unholy and profane, &c., and if any other thing is opposed to sound teaching. The law was a rule of death, not of life, a ministry of death and of condemnation, as is shown in 2 Cor. 3, even when Jehovah's mercy and longsuffering were proclaimed along with its inflexible claims on sinful man. It works wrath therefore, not righteousness; not because the commandment is not holy and just and good, but because fallen man is all wrong, ungodly, and without strength. Hence the apostle declares that the power of sin is the law, and that it was added for the sake of transgressions, or (as another epistle says) that it came in by the bye that, not sin but, the offense might abound.
This is little more than a setting down together of what scripture expressly teaches of the law; which is not more expressive of its real character and effects, than exclusive of traditional theology in all its forms, Popish and Protestant, Arminian and Calvinistic. Man fell under a law incomparably less stringent than the law; as he sinned in the long interval from Adam to Moses when there was no law. For sin is lawlessness, doing one's own will independently of God; as men sinned, so death reigned. The law brought in the added guilt of violating known law. But Christ is the end of law for righteousness to every one that believes. And Christianity is not only that faith is reckoned for righteousness to us, as to Abraham, but that we died with Christ and were baptized, not to a living Messiah, but to His death. How then should we who died to sin live any longer therein? And those who knew law, as Jewish believers did, are carefully taught that they were made dead to the law by the body of Christ, that they should belong to another to Him that was raised from the dead. Thus is fruit brought forth to God. This is what Puritanism saw no more than its usual opponents, though a cardinal truth of the gospel. Had we been of Ephraim, or of Judah, yea, of Levi and Aaron's house, we have been made quit of the law, having died to that wherein we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter. Can anything be clearer or more conclusive than these words of God, so forgotten in theological systems of all shades?
Never was law on the one hand so vindicated as in the cross of Christ, never so established as in His death (Rom. 3:3131Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. (Romans 3:31)), which is the basis of the gospel to ruined sinners. On the other hand the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled, not in Pharisees who talked and boasted vainly of being under the law, but in Christians who died to law as well as sin, and walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit (Rom. 8). But one prefers to affirm the truth from scripture rather than to criticize the defective and erroneous views of others.