II The Lawful Use of Law
1. As a restraint to keep outward evil in check... “The law was made for sinners and profane.”... Illustrate this by reference to capital punishment. No sane man believes that punishment by death will make a nation’s heart right, or that the sight of an execution can soften or ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that way. It is not meant for that purpose. It is meant to guard society.
The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from scandalous ribaldry.
And therefore clearly understand, law is a mere check to bad men: it does not improve them; it often makes them worse; it cannot sanctify them. God never intended that it should. It saves society from the open transgression; it does not contemplate the amelioration of the offender.
Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the use of the law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated. Strict rules are needed exactly in proportion as we want the power or the will to rule ourselves. It is not because the Gospel has come that we are free from the law, but because, and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state. “It is for a righteous man” that the law is not made, and thus we see the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which we are called in Christ, is not the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on the side of the law, and therefore unrestrained by it in doing right.
Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, &c. We are not under them.—Because we may break them as we like? Nay—the moment we desire, the law is alive again to us.
2. As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees, principles and a spirit.
This is the use attributed to it in verse 5. “The end of the commandment is charity.”
Compare with this, two other passages—“Christ is the end of the law for righteousness,” and “love is the fulfilling of the law.” “Perfect love casteth out fear.”
In every law there is a spirit; in every maxim a principle; and the law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of conserving the spirit and the principle which they enshrine.
St. Paul compares God’s dealing with man to a wise parent’s instruction of his child.—See the Epistle to the Galatians. Boyhood is under law; you appeal not to the boy’s reason, but his will, by rewards and punishments: Do this, and I will reward you; do it not, and you will be punished. So long as a man is under law, this is salutary and necessary, but only while under law. He is free when he discerns principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will to obey. So that rules have done for him a double work, taught him the principle and facilitated obedience to it.
Distinguish however.—In point of time, law is first—in point of importance, the Spirit.
In point of time, Charity is the “end” of the commandment—in point of importance, first and foremost.
The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit obedience to rules. The first thing in importance for a man to learn is, to sever himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why? That he may become an Antinomian, or a Latitudinarian? No. He is severed from submission to the maxim because he has got allegiance to the principle. He is free from the rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written in his heart.
This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far as he is not under the law; he is free from the law so far as he is free from the evil which the law restrains; he progresses so far as there is no evil in him which it is an effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and liberty are—when we,—who though having the first fruits of the Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, “to wit, the redemption of our body”—shall have been freed in body, soul, and spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down by force. In other words, so far as Christ’s statement is true of us, “The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.”