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.
he relationship between Grace and Law, as they relate to the life of a believer, has been a frequent issue of tension in theological history and practice. This has a bearing on how we view the proper of relation between Justification and Sanctification, the place of good works in the life of a believer and the polar dangers of Legalism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other. In the medieval period the Roman Catholic Church adopted a view where the believer’s obedience to the Law of God was meritorious and thus a component part of his Justification before God. At the Reformation, the Protestant Church rejected this and recovered the Biblical doctrine of Justification by faith alone, but there were different views between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the relationship between the Law and the Gospel.
Thus I have shortly shewed what are the effects or works of the law, when managed by the Spirit of God for this end, to bring an elect vessel to become dead to the law. The man, I say, getting a discovery of these things, must now conclude that there is no hope or expectation of life for him by the works of the law; and therefore he must turn his back upon that and seek relief from some other airth, and row to another shore. For clearing of this matter, let us speak a little to some few questions.
