Selected from: The Free Presbyterian Magazine and Monthly Record, Vol. XXIV, No. 9 (January 1920), 265–272.
This is the expression, you observe, not only of sincere love to the law, but of ardent love to the law. It is an appeal to God about an ardent love to the law: “O how love I thy law.” I would, entreating the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, think for a little with you on the grounds why the psalmist and why the saints do love God’s law, do love God’s law so ardently. Why do they love? Now, all that is rightly moral is founded on the fitness of things; therefore this love, as moral—as indeed it is the sum of all morality—is founded on the amiableness of the law. Love to the law is proper, and right, and fitting, just because the law is amiable. But let us inquire a little deeper into those circumstances about the law on which the amiableness of the law is grounded. Philosophical divines say, “on the fitness of things,” and it is very true; but that is a cold expression. That which then, here, is the fitness of things is the character of God, and the character of the rational creature of God.
The first foundation of the amiableness of the law is the character of God. We speak, perhaps not in strict propriety, of moral law as eternal. I do not think in strict propriety, because there is no eternal subject, and eternity of law presupposes an eternal subject. But as we cannot get in eternity past an eternal subject—unless, indeed, we find him, as we may do, in God’s decree and purpose to create rational creatures—then the ground of the amiableness of God’s law lies deeper, viz., in the moral perfections of God himself. You have learned in your Catechism, “What is God?” and the answer is, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” These perfections of God are distinguished into his communicable and incommunicable perfections. His incommunicable perfections are infinity, eternity, and immutability; and he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in all his perfections, in his incommunicable perfections. His communicable perfections are wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth; and among these, the communicable perfections of God, we may distinguish between the two first—wisdom and power—and the others, which are mostly properly called God’s moral perfections—holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. For wisdom, considered simply as intellect, and if not conjoined with moral perfection, is the wisdom that is “earthly, sensual, devilish”, and so with power, considered simply in itself. But wisdom and power in God are holy, just, and good wisdom and power, and are in God as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. In creating rational spirits—angels and men—God communicated to them not only being—finite and changeable being—wisdom, and power, but also the other perfections, which we more strictly call the moral perfections of God—holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And in these lies, fundamentally, the amiableness of God, which mounts up by the incommunicable perfections of infinity, eternity, and unchangeableness into not only amiableness but adorable excellence. Well, that fundamentally. And here in the nature of God, we have, not strictly speaking, eternal law; because not only was there no eternal subject except in God’s decree, but that decree itself was not necessary: no being but God has necessary existence. We still have left God in his wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, clothed with the divinity of his incommunicable perfections: this we have left, necessarily existing.
The second foundation of the amiableness of the law is the character of the rational creature of God. God created intelligent, spiritual beings—angels and men. We shall confine ourselves to men. Men are beings of a spiritual nature, and so are capable of holding communion with God, who is a Spirit. They were made in the image of God, and have a finite and—as regards the past—a non-eternal and changeable being. They possess no necessary existence, but a divinely-given existence, and were made partakers at their beginning of the communicable perfections of wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, wherein conspicuously shine the moral perfections of spirituality, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. So, besides the foundation of God’s perfections—and specially, though not exclusively, God’s moral perfections—we have now a subject of this law. We have God—holy, just, and good; we have man—made in the image of God—holy, just, and good; and between God and man we have a law that man continue to be and act as holy, just, and good. We have the eternal moral perfections of God, the moral perfections of God’s intelligent creature, and the moral law, which binds man in the image of God to be holy, just, and good, and to continue and act as such. Now this, you see, is altogether indissoluble; this cannot go; nothing can destroy this, unless the annihilation of the creature. For the moral perfection of God, in the likeness of which the creature was created, is indestructible. God being what he is, and the nature of man what it is, this law, which binds the holy, just, and good creature of the holy, just, and good God to preserve and ever exhibit this, of necessity must remain. Well, whatever beauty is not only in man, as coming from the hands of God, and made in his image—not only in the image and reflection, but all that is in the prototype, the moral nature of God—that is the eternal beauty of morality, the eternal beauty of law. “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good” (Rom. 7:12), as God is, and as God made man. Hence the nature of all true religion and a prominent feature in it is love to God for what God himself is, and specially for what God is in his moral perfections—those clothed with the beauty of self-existence, infinity, eternity, and immutability. In the infinite and perfect amiableness of God, we have the foundation of all religion. “[Jehovah] is the rock; his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deut. 32:4). “Exalt ye the LORD our God, and worship at his footstool; for [the Lord our God] is holy” (Ps. 99:5).
I might descant on the beauty of what we may call communicated law in Adam, made in the image of God. How beautiful the law! That is what the law requires, and what God has imparted. How beautiful do holiness, justice, goodness and truth make him! And his beauty, his conformity to the law, is conformity to the moral image of God, the lovely one. But I pass from it.
Then we come to another and very peculiar exhibition of the law as lovely, and here I return to that selfsame chapter, Romans 7, and these words: “Wherefore the law is holy and the commandment holy, just, and good…for we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin” (verses 12 and 14). These words, I take it, exhibit the first true view of the law obtained by a sinner with whom the Spirit of God hath begun to take a saving dealing. Paul was a Pharisee, and, speaking of the time when he was that, he says of himself, “Touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless” (Phil. 3:6); but it merely is there the outward righteousness of the law. Here is the sinner’s first true view of the law. Nowadays, I am afraid that “law work” has gone very much out of fashion. “I am carnal, sold under sin” (Rom 7:14). These words describe what fallen man is, but it is the language of a renewed man. Let us look at this man. The commandment has come to him; the commandment which is holy, just, and good. “I have seen the law as I never saw it before; I have seen it in the light of what God is, of what he made man to be, a spiritual, holy, just, and good law.” Whereupon there is also the discovery of what man, as fallen, is. “But I am carnal, sold under sin.” Why, the unregenerate man thinks that sin is liberty, but not so the man taught of God. He says, “I am sold under it.” Sold. I think the language is borrowed from the Book of Judges, which so often speaks of God selling his people. Given over—sold. “I was a free man once, but the recollection is bitter.” The law shines on him, which is holy, just, and good; it comes and shows him what he should be, and what he must have been once; it says, “You are a sold man.” Now, the man is in a strange position. What makes him cry out, “I am carnal” ? The sight of a beauty he never saw before—the law spiritual, holy, just, and good. And what are we to do with this man? It is a question, what can be done with him. Shall the commandment go away? Nay, it is the first sight he has ever seen of what is spiritual, holy, just, and good; all the misery is, “I am carnal, sold under sin.” So we find this language going on, expressing the assent of his judgment, the consent of his will, and the delight of his affections to and in this law. And the longer I live, and reflect upon it, the more I am satisfied, with many excellent divines, that the first step of effectual calling is peculiar to the effectually called, “convincing us of our sin and misery.” For it is such a conviction of sin and misery as that the man can no longer be happy without the law in him, any more than he can be happy under it. This is the death of all antinomianism, of all legalism, and Pelagian antinomianism. “The law is holy, and just, and good; I am carnal, sold under sin.” His desire is deliverance, with the honour and glory of the law, if there be such a thing. “Honour the law, and save me if that be possible; deliver me from this slavery and bondage of corruption.”
And here you will observe I speak more plainly, because it can hurt no truly convinced sinner. The danger that might have been apprehended is this, that the man may rest in the first step—may say, “This is peculiar to those whom God purposes to save, so I may rest in it.” But that is contrary to the nature of the conviction. No man in this state can rest short of deliverance and obtaining deliverance; that which will show it to be the product of true conviction of sin and misery is that he says, “Amen,” to the law. The holy, just and good law, the law to which I assent, the law to which I consent, the law in which I delight, it condemned me. It slew me. No, sin taking occasion by it, slew me. The Spirit of God, enlightening the convinced sinner, shows him that the precept of the law being holy, just, and good, the sanction of the law is holy, just, and good too. Ah! Yes, peradventure the sanction may crush him. But in the work of the Spirit of God applying the law, it is contrary to the nature of the work that the man should grumble at it, for he sees the law is holy, just, and good in precept and in sanction, and so he says, “Amen, amen.”
But let us look. “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). Let us look at Jesus, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:6–7). We have seen Adam made in the image of God—holy, just, and good—and placed—himself being holy, just, and good—under a holy, just, and good law. But a greater than Adam is here. True, in a certain respect, we may say, and I say it with reverence, that Christ was no better than the law. His being holy, harmless, and undefiled was no more than the law required. His doing all the Father’s will was no more than the law required. But there are two circumstances which bring an immense honour to the law in Christ, which it could never have had in Adam. For, first, Jesus is not only the perfect exhibition of the law as holy man, but the incarnate Son of God. And secondly, his obedience is the obedience of one who, to do honour to the law, stooped under its authority, being no original subject of the law. The one circumstance is the divine nature of him who obeyed it, and the other is his being, as God, no original subject. He, being God, voluntarily came down, and there is one of the grounds of the true and proper meritoriousness of Christ’s obedience, that it was an obedience performed by one who was not an original subject of the law. “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” Christ, the eternal, co-essential Son of God, was made under the law, being, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he whose authority is the source of law to the creature, whose moral perfections are the fundamental ground of that law. Who is he who obeys? “Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Man thought to rise above the law. God, the Lawgiver, comes down and honours the law by coming under it. Christ is at once the eternal Lawgiver, and the subject of the law, and the perfect exhibition of it. And so, this obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ is presented to us under various aspects. His obedience unto death is that by which we are redeemed; it constitutes that righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto and upon all that believe, and is that one obedience by which the many are justified. It is our pattern also. That which constitutes our justifying righteousness is at the same time the pattern we are called to reflect, that to which God has predestinated his people to be conformed, and to which they themselves are, in the use of the appointed means, through faith in the Saviour, to conform themselves. “We all,…beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
And here let me remark that it is a sad mistake in us to slump Christ’s obedience, as we often do. It makes up the righteousness of Christ; yes, but in that righteousness there are many circumstances. He was holy, harmless, undefiled. He did always the things that pleased the Father; but he did this and he did that. He went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and he came out and preached the gospel. He cast out devils, and healed all manner of sickness and disease among the people. We should particularise. And neither should we slump, as we often do, justification and sanctification. If we look at justifying righteousness in its particulars, what does it constitute to us? It constitutes the rule for our imitation. True, the obedience of this person was one which in no sense could be rendered but by the performer of it that righteousness by which we are justified. And yet, while no person enters into that, the healing of the sick and the going about continually doing good are not all the respects in which there is something imitable in Christ. For it is said, Christ also suffered for sins, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps, that we should follow them even in that; and again, “He laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). Consider then this beauty of the law as in Christ, as in him who stooped down to come under it, whose condescendency, that he hath stooped under it, renders his obedience of infinite efficacy because divine. Contemplate the law in Christ, the Lawgiver, the Law-fulfiller, and the Law-exhibitor.
Well then, there is a righteousness for a sinner, and a pattern for a sinner. Yes, but I need something more, and so Christ is the head of influences—Christ baptizes with the Holy Ghost. There is provision made not only for the remission of sin, the beach of the law, but Christ is the Mediator of the new covenant in which this promise is made: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” We have seen the law in the beauty of all God’s moral perfections, in the beauty of man as coming from the hand of God, in the deep conviction by the Spirit of God of what God is and law is, and he, the sinner, is not; and now we see it in the revelation by the same Spirit of Christ, as the Lord our righteousness, the Lord our exemplar, and as Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Ghost. God, who justifies the ungodly, says, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). Then may the psalmist say, “This holy, just, and good law, I shall get it within me; it will be in my heart too; the great God himself will come, and with his own finger, write it there.” When thou art brought to the Mediator, and art down in the dust with closed mouth, what will God do with thee? He will write on thee. He will make thee a fair epistle. Surely, he will write something good. Yes, his holy, just, and good law, his own image, in which he made man, his own higher image, in his Son; his law, which has been honoured by the obedience of his own Son; that law he will write it in thine heart, and put it in thine inward parts. And, “the end of the commandment is love” (1 Tim. 1:5), and “The LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart… to love the LORD thy God” (Deut. 30:6). He shall not depart from thee, and he will put his fear into thine heart that thou shall not depart from him.
How lovely then in all these aspects is the law! Does the psalmist wrong in loving it? Does he love it too much, when he goes to God, and, not perhaps thinking so much of his love to the law as just under the divine influence of that love pouring it out, says, “O how love I thy law!”?
Being in the new covenant, and through the Mediator of the new covenant, it is the law as stooped to by Christ, as obeyed by Christ, as glorified by Christ; and it is the law as given us as a rule of life, but an authoritative rule, in the pierced, bleeding hands of the great Law-fulfiller. Now, instead of “Cursed is every one,” it is, “Christ hath redeemed us!” (Gal. 3:13). Instead of “The man that doeth these things shall live in them” (Rom. 10:5), it is, “The just LORD…will not do iniquity” (Zeph. 3:5), and, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent” (John 17:3).
It is of this law that he here saith, “O, how love I thy law!” It is, strictly speaking, the perceptive part of the law, of the commandment that he loves, because of the loveliness of it; and strictly and properly it is the law, as the Jew understood it, in the setting of the whole revelation which God has made of himself, especially made of himself in his Son. Therefore, it is the law under which the believer is “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). That we may love the law, let us meditate on the law.
I have spoken in generals, but, as already hinted, error is apt to lurk in generals. One great error is to slump Christ’s obedience, not considering the details of it. Another is to slump the law. “It is just love; the Ten Commandments.” Yes, but the first commandment is holy, just and good, and the second is holy, just and good, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and so on. And all the details which we have to trace out in the whole Bible are holy and just and good, as well as the summary of the ten gathered, and the great two. God designed that they should be shortened for our memories. He has summed up all the commandments, for he knows that we need concentration, that we love ourselves in generals. He has summed them up first in the ten, and then the ten in the great two; that to help our concentration and give us a centre. But mistakes lurk in the generals; let us spread them out. And in every one of the commandments, there is its peculiar beauty; its beauty in itself, and in its relation to the whole complete law of God, and a peculiar beauty in its relation to the variety of circumstances in which God has placed man. Every one of the commandments has not only its general principle, but its details, so wonderful and various. So the believer is called into a broad way: “I have seen an end of all perfection, but thy commandment is exceeding broad” (Ps. 119:96). There will be plenty of duty to do in this law, which is very broad. In bringing me into it, the Lord hath brought me into a large place, where there are a great many laws fitted for all my powers and faculties and circumstances. That is a beauty of the law, that it is so very broad. Well, let us ever, for we ever need it, fall back as sinners on the Law-fulfiller; but then, falling back as sinners on the Law-fulfiller, let us as saints, or at least as sinners believing in Christ for the Holy Ghost, contemplate his law. I am guilty; I have broken it, but blessed be God, he hath fulfilled it; yes, and hath left me an example that I should follow his steps, and hath given me the exceeding great and precious promise that God will write it in my heart and put it in my inward parts, this command and the other command. And so, putting the precept of the law in its proper setting, both as regards the creature relation and the new creature relation, which the law bears to us, while making our meditation on the law, let our hearts burn with love. But let it not rest in sentiment; let it burn, and let it go out to the end of the commandment. Now “the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. 1:5). “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21).
Note by Dr. Duncan on Romans, Chapter 7
It would appear that Dr. Duncan, before preaching the above sermon, read the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and made some remarks on the chapter. He said that in verses 15-21, the expression, “I would” should be, “I will.” It is not “would-ing,” but “will-ing.” Our readers will best understand the point by looking up the passage.
The 23rd verse is, “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” On this verse, Dr. Duncan made the following remarks.
“A battle, and in that battle, even a captivity. Now you know in warfare, when a prisoner of war is taken, he is not a deserter. If we were at war with another country, as some years ago—God grant it may be long ere it happens again—we were at war with France, and if a British soldier were taken prisoner, and carried to a French prison, he would not grow a Frenchman. If it were proposed to him, he would say, “No, I will never cease to be a Briton, to fight for my Queen and country; and my heart is still with my country, my heart is still in the battlefield, and, if I can get off, my place still is the battlefield.” Mark the difference then, that there is between a prisoner of war, and a deserter and traitor.”
