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Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2024 16:19:28 GMT -5
The Law of God, or the Moral Law in General
The term “law” in Scripture is to be understood either in an extended or in a restricted sense. In its extended or large acceptance, it is used sometimes to signify the five books of Moses (Luke 24:44), at other times all the books of the Old Testament (John 10:34), sometimes the whole Word of God in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament (Psalm 19:7), in some places the Old Testament dispensation as distinguished from the New (John 1:17), in others the Old Testament dispensation, as including prophecies, promises, and types of Messiah (Luke 16:16;
Hebrews 10:1) and in several the doctrine of the gospel (Isaiah 2:3 and 42:4).
In its restricted or limited sense, it is employed to express the rule which God has prescribed to His rational creatures in order to direct and oblige them to the right performance of all their duties to Him. In other words, it is used to signify the declared will of God, directing and obliging mankind to do that which pleases Him, and to abstain from that which displeases Him. This, in the strict and proper sense of the word, is the law of God; and it is divided into the natural law and the positive law. The natural law of God, or the law of nature,is that necessary and unchangeable rule of duty which is founded in the infinitely holy and righteous nature of God. All men, as the reasonable creatures of God, are, and cannot but be, indispensably bound to it. The positive law of God comprises those institutions which depend merely upon His sovereign will, and which He might never have prescribed and yet
His nature always continued the same; such as the command not to eat of the forbidden fruit; the command during the period of the Old Testament dispensation to keep holy the Sabbath of Jehovah, the seventh day of the week, which under the New Testament is altered to the first day; the ceremonial law given to the Israelites which prescribed the rites of God’s worship, together with many of the precepts of their judicial law; and the positive precepts concerning the worship of God under the gospel. The dictates of God’s natural law are delivered with authority
because they are just and reasonable in their own nature previous to any divine precept concerning them, inasmuch as they are all founded in the infinite holiness, righteousness, and wisdom of His nature (Psalm 3:7-8). On the contrary, the dictates of His positive law become just and reasonable because they are delivered with authority. The former are “holy, just, and good,” and therefore they are commanded; the latter are commanded, and therefore they are “holy, just, and good.” Those commandments of God which are founded in the holiness and righteousness of His nature are unalterable and perpetually the same; whereas these which are founded on the sovereignty of His will are in themselves alterable, and He may, by His own express appointment, alter them whenever He pleases. But till He Himself alters them, they continue to be of immutable obligation (Matthew 5:18).
Although the positive precepts of God are capable of being changed by Him, yet our obedience to them is built upon a moral foundation. It is a moral duty, a duty of perpetual obligation, to obey in all things the revealed will of God. It was upon a moral ground that Christ as Mediator proceeded when He changed the seals of the covenant of
grace, altered the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, and instituted new ordinances of worship and government for His Church. And it is upon the same ground that we are bound to obey the positive commands of Christ respecting those ordinances. The law of God strictly taken in the aspects which it bears on mankind is to be considered in a threefold point of view: first, as written on the heart of man in his creation; second, as given under the form of a covenant of works to him; and third as a rule of life in the hand of Christ the Mediator to all true believers.
Section 1. The law as inscribed on the heart of man in his creation God, in creating the first man, made him after His own moral image (Genesis 1:27). This image, as the Apostle Paul informs us, consists of knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). God, then, created man in His own moral image by inscribing His law, the transcript of His own righteousness and holiness, on man’s mind and heart. The law of God is to be taken either materially, as merely directing and obliging the rational creature to perfect obedience, or formally, as having received the form of a covenant of works. Now it is the law not formally, but materially considered, that was inscribed on the heart of man in his creation. Man, therefore, as the creature of God, would have been obliged to perform perfect obedience to the law in this view of it, though a covenant of works had never been made with him. This law, and sufficient power to obey it, were included in the image of God, according to which He created man (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Although the law, in this view of it, contained no positive precepts, yet it required man to believe everything which God should reveal, and to do everything which He should command (Deuteronomy 12:32). Since the first man, on whose heart his Creator had inscribed this law, was not confirmed in rectitude of nature and life, and so was fallible; it implied a sanction of eternal punishment to him, as the
just recompense of his disobedience, if he should at any time transgress it (Romans 1:32 and 6:23). I say, it implied this sanction, for as it was never designed by God to be in that simple form either a rule of duty to man or of judgment to himself, and as Adam was not permitted to transgress till after the covenant of works was made
with him, there does not seem to have been any express threatening of eternal punishment annexed to it. But though it implied a penal sanction, and though disobedience to it would deserve even eternal death, yet there is no ground from the Scripture to conclude that a penal sanction or a threatening of eternal wrath is inseparable from it. For glorified saints and confirmed angels in heaven are all naturally, necessarily, and eternally bound to perform perfect obedience to it as the law of creation; but to affirm that they have a threatening of eternal punishment annexed to it would be rash and unscriptural. The truth is, there is no place for a penal sanction where there cannot be a possibility of sinning. Besides, if a threatening of eternal punishment was inseparable from the law of
creation, true believers, who are and always must be under this law, should inevitably remain under that threatening. Although their justification for the righteousness of Jesus Christ, received by faith and imputed by God, is perfect and irrevocable, yet if, even in that state, they committed but a single sin, it would lay them afresh under condemnation to eternal wrath. And that would be contrary to these consoling passages of Scripture: “He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life,and shall not come into condemnation” (John 5:24). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8;1). Indeed, if a penal sanction were inseparable from the law of creation, believers would at once be both justified and condemned. For as all men, considered as creatures of God, are subject to the law of creation (Romans 2:15), so this law cannot but forbid the smallest degree of sin, and cannot but require perfection of obedience from all believers as well as all unbelievers. It may be proper here to remark that no mere man, even by perfect obedience to the law in that simple form, could ever have merited from God eternal life. It therefore implied no promise of eternal life, even no promise that mankind should ever be confirmed
under it as a rule of life. It was only when it received the form of the covenant of works that a promise of life eternal and, consequently, of confirmation in holiness and happiness, was annexed to it. The law, as written on the heart of the first man, is often called the law of creation, because it was the will of the sovereign Creator,
revealed to the reasonable creature, by impressing or engraving it on his mind and heart. To this law, so inlaid in the mind and heart in creation, as to the natural instinct and moral rectitude of the rational creature, every person, as a reasonable creature, is indispensably bound. It obliges to perfect and perpetual obedience in all possible states of the creature, whether he be on earth, in heaven, or even in hell. Since man is the creature of God, and since, in his creation, he was made in the image of God, he owes all possible subjection and obedience to distinct, and the impression of it on his nature was so deep, that they were equal to an express revelation of it; because the dictates of this law are the very same that the dictates of natural conscience in the first man were; and, because the obligation to perform perfect obedience to it proceeds from the nature of God and lies on the
nature of man. The knowledge which man in innocence had of this law was cemented with his nature. It is sometimes called the moral law, and is so called because it was a revelation of the will of God as his moral governor to the first man, and was the standard and rule of all the man’s moral qualities and actions; because, while it was manifested to his reason, it represented to him the moral fitness of all his holy inclinations, thoughts, words, and actions; because while it regulates the manners or morals of all men, it is of perpetual obligation; and because it is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments, which are usually called the moral law. The Ten Commandments are the sum and substance of it. There is, however, this difference between it and them: in it there is nothing but what is moral, but in them there is something that is positive. The obligation of the law of nature results both from the nature of God and the nature of man; and from the relation between God the Creator, Proprietor, Preserver, Benefactor, and Governor of man, and man the creature, the property, and the subject of God. The immediate ground of the obligation of the natural law upon man is the sovereign authority of God, or His absolute right to command the
perfect obedience of man. This sovereign authority of the Lord flows from the infinite supereminence or supreme excellence of His nature above the nature of man; from His being the Creator of man and man’s being His creature; from His being the Preserver and Benefactor of man, and man’s being dependent upon Him for life and all the comforts of life; and from His being, therefore, the sole Proprietor and sovereign Ruler of man, and man’s being His
property and in absolute subjection to Him. The obligation of the natural law upon mankind, then, as resulting
from the nature of God and from the relations between God and man, is such that even God Himself cannot dispense with it. It cannot cease to bind so long as God continues to be God and man to be man—God to be the sovereign Creator and man to be His dependent creature. Since the authority of that law is divine, the obligation flowing from it is eternal and immutable. It must continue forever without the smallest diminution, and that upon all men,
whether saints or sinners; at all times, from the moment of man’s creation before the covenant of works, under the covenant of works, under the covenant of grace, and even through all eternity. Man has no being, no life, no activity without God. So long, therefore, as man continues in existence, he is bound to have no being but God, and no activity but such as is according to His will. That fair copy of the natural law which had been transcribed into the nature of the first man in his creation was, by the fall, much obliterated; and it continues still to be, in a great degree, defaced and even obliterated in the minds of all His unregenerate offspring. And, indeed, if it was not in a great measure obliterated, what need could there be of inscribing it anew on the hearts of the elect? What
occasion would there be for such a promise as this: “I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10)? What necessity could there be of writing it in the Sacred Volume in order to make it known to men in all generations? Indeed, so obliterated was it that the Lord saw it necessary to make it known to His people by both external and internal revelation. But although this natural law inscribed on the heart of Adam was much defaced by the Fall, yet it was not wholly obliterated. Some faint impressions or small relics of it remain still in the minds of all men. Indeed, with respect to its general principles and the immediate conclusions obviously deducible from them, it is not and cannot be totally effaced; but with regard to such conclusions as are more or less remote, it is, by the darkness of the mind and the depravity of the heart of man, wholly perverted (Romans 1:21, 32). The general principles which, in some measure, are still inscribed on the minds of men, even where they have not the benefit of the written law, are such as these: there is a God; that God is to be worshipped; that none are to be injured; that parents ought to be honored; that we should do to others what we would reasonably wish that they would do to us; that such general principles as these are, still in some degree, engraved on the minds of all men, is evident from these words of an apostle: “The Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the
things contained in the law.” This shows the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another (Romans 2: 14—15). The same is also manifest from the laws which,in countries destitute of the light of revelation, are commonly enacted for encouraging virtue and discouraging vice, and for preserving the rights of civil society. Men in heathen countries can have no standard for those laws but the relics of natural law, which all the descendants of Adam bring with them into the world. The remains of the law of nature in the minds of men are commonly called the light of nature, sometimes the light of reason. They are the dictates of natural conscience, and they contain those moral principles respecting good and evil which have essential equity in them. The law of nature, as engraved on the heart of Adam in his creation, should always be distinguished from the light of nature as now enjoyed. The former is uniform and stable, of universal extent, and of perpetual obligation; the latter, being that knowledge of the nature of God, and of their own nature, as well as of the duties resulting from the relations between them which men since the fall
actually possess, is greatly diversified in its extent and degree, according to their different opportunities, capacities, and dispositions. In some parts of the world, where the light of nature is not assisted by the light of revelation, it does not appear superior to the sagacity of some of the inferior creatures. How far, then, must it
be from being sufficient to guide men to true virtue and happiness; or to afford them in their present depraved state proper views of the wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy of God ! So much for the law of nature, which is the law of God in its primitive, simple, and absolute form
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Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2024 16:21:34 GMT -5
Section 2. The law as given under the form of the covenant of works to Adam
The law of creation, or the Ten Commandments, was, in the form of a covenant of works, given to the first Adam after he had been put into the garden of Eden. It was given him as the first parent and the federal representative of all his posterity by ordinary gene ration. An express threatening of death, and a gracious promise of life, annexed
to the law of creation, made it to Adam a covenant of works proposed; and his consent, which he as a sinless creature could not refuse, made it a covenant of works accepted. As formed into a covenant of works, it is called by the Apostle Paul “the law of works” (Romans 3:27), that is, the law as a covenant of works. It requires works or perfect obedience on pain of death, spiritual, temporal, and eternal; and it promises to the man who performs perfect and personal obedience life, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. In the law, under the form of a covenant of works, then, three things are presented to our consideration: a precept, a promise, and a penal sanction.
1. A precept requiring perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience as the condition of eternal life. The law of creation requires man to perform perfect obedience, and says, “Do.' But the law as a covenant of works requires him to “do and live”—to do, as the condition of life; to do, in order to acquire by his obedience a title to life eternal. The command to perform perfect obedience merely is not the covenant of works; for man was and is immutably and eternally bound to yield perfect obedience to the law of creation, though a covenant of works had never been made with him. But the form of the command in the covenant of works is perfect obedience as the condition of life. The law in this form comprised not only all the commandments peculiar to it as the law of nature, but also a positive precept which depended entirely on the will of God. “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16- 17). This positive precept was, in effect, a summary of all the commands of the natural or moral law: obedience to it included obedience to them all, and disobedience to it was a transgression of them all at once. The covenant of works, accordingly, could not have
been broken otherwise than by transgressing that positive precept. The command requiring perfect obedience as the condition of life bound Adam, and all his natural posterity in him, not only by the authority of God his sovereign Lord and Creator, but by his own voluntary consent, to perform that obedience.
The natural law, given in the form of a covenant of works, to Adam and all his natural descendants, required them to believe whatever the Lord should reveal or promise, and to do whatever He should command. All divine precepts, therefore, are virtually and really comprehended in it. “The law of the Lord is perfect” (Psalm 19:7).
But if any instance of duty owed by man to God, in any age of the church, were not either directly or indirectly commanded in it, it would not be a perfect law. But since it is perfect, all duties and, among others, the duties of believing and repenting of sin are virtually commanded in it; they are required in its first commandment (see the Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 104).
Adam, it is true, was not actually obliged by it to believe in a Redeemer till, after he had sinned, a Redeemer was revealed to him. But the same command that required him to believe and trust the promise of God his Creator required him also to believe in God his Redeemer as soon as He should be revealed and offered to him. Nor was Adam required to repent of sin before sin was committed. But the same law that obliged him to abhor, watch against, and abstain
from all appearance of evil bound him also to bewail and forsake sin whenever he found that he was guilty of it. Since the holy law is a perfect rule of all internal as well as external obedience, it cannot but require faith and repentance as well as all other duties. Without them, no other performances can please God (Hebrews 11:6). Our
blessed Lord informs us that faith is one of “the weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23:23), and the Apostle Paul says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Unbelief, which is a departing from the living God, is evidently forbidden in the first commandment of the law. Faith, then, as I said already, is required in the same command (Isaiah 26:4 and 1 John 3:23). And with regard to repentance, though neither the covenant of works nor of grace admits of it as any atonement for sin or any ground of title to life, yet on the supposition that sin has been committed it is a duty enjoined in the first and, indeed, in every other precept of the moral law.
Although the law in its covenant form requires of all who are under it since the fall perfect obedience as the condition of life, and full satisfaction for sin in their own persons; and at the same time, upon the revelation and offer of Christ in the gospel as Jehovah our Righteousness, commands them to believe in Him as such; yet, as is
the case in various other instances of duty, it requires the one of these only on supposition that the other is not performed. The law as a covenant of works requires that all who are under it present to it, as the conditions of eternal life, perfect obedience and complete satisfaction for sin, either in their own persons or in that of a
responsible surety. So long then as a sinner, unwilling to be convinced of his sin and his want of righteousness, cleaves to the law as a covenant, and refuses to accept and present in the hand of faith the spotless righteousness of the adorable Surety, that sinner continues “a debtor to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3). He keeps himself under an obligation to do, in his own person, all that the law in that form requires, and also to suffer all that it threatens. The righteous law, accordingly, goes on to use him as he deserves. It continues to proceed against him without the smallest abatement of its high demands, requiring of him the complete payment of his debt both of perfect obedience and of infinite satisfaction for his disobedience. As it accepts no obedience but that which is absolutely perfect or fully answerable to all its demands (Galatians 3:10-11), so the acceptance of a man’s person as righteous according to it will depend on the acceptance of his obedience (Matthew 5:18; Romans 10:5).
In consequence of God’s having proposed the law in its covenant form to Adam, and of Adam’s having, as the representative of all his natural descendants, consented to it, all the children of men, while they continue in their natural state, remain firmly, in the sight of God, under the whole original obligation of it— even those who, as members of the visible church, are under an external dispensation of the covenant of grace remain under all its obligation (Romans 9:31- 32). For though the law in its covenant form is broken, yet it is far from being repealed or set aside. The obligation of this covenant continues in all its force, in time and through eternity, upon every
sinner who is not released from it by God, the other party. The awful consequence is that every unregenerate sinner is bound at once to perform perfect obedience, and also to endure the full execution of the penal sanction. The preceptive part of that divine contract continues to bind, both by its original authority and by man’s consent to it; which consent is no more his to recall, unless he is freed from his obligation by the other contracting party. And now that the curse of the covenant has, in consequence of transgression, become absolute, it binds as strongly as even the precept. The law, then, as a covenant of works, demands in the most authoritative manner, from every descendant of Adam who is under it, perfect holiness of nature, perfect righteousness of life, and complete satisfaction for sin. And none of the race of fallen Adam can ever enter heaven unless he either answers these three demands perfectly in his own person, or accepts by faith the consummate righteousness of the second Adam, who “is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth” (Romans 10:4).
2. In the law as a covenant of works there is also a promise, a gracious promise of the continuance of spiritual and temporal life and, in due time, of eternal life. This promise, which flowed solely from infinite benignity and condescension in God, was made, and was to have been fulfilled, to Adam and all his natural posterity, on condition that he as their representative perfectly obeyed the precept. That a promise of life was made to the first Adam, and to all his natural descendants in him, on condition of his perfect obedience during the time of his probation is evident; for the Lord Jesus said, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). Again, “This do and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:28). The Apostle Paul also says, “Moses describes the righteousness Which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Romans 10:5). The promise of life to Adam as the representative of his posterity was implied in the threatening of death. When the Lord said to him, “In the day that thou eats thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17), it implied, “If thou eat not of it, thou shalt surely live.” Besides, the tree of life, which was one of the seals of that covenant, serves to evince the same thing. It sealed the promise of life to Adam as long as he continued to perform perfect obedience. It is evident that the infinitely great and sovereign Creator could be under no obligations to man, the creature of His power, but such as
arose from the wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness of His own nature. It was therefore free to Him whether He would still, by absolute authority, command man to obey Him, or enter into a covenant with man for that purpose; whether after perfect obedience to His law He would give man eternal life or annihilate him; and whether, if it should please Him to give it, He would bestow it on condition of man’s obedience, or make a free grant of it to him, and
confirm him in the eternal enjoyment of it, as He has done elect angels. It depended solely upon the will of God whether there would be a covenant at all containing a promise of eternal life to man, and, if a promise of it, whether that promise would be absolute or conditional. The promise of eternal life upon man’s perfect obedience, then, flowed entirely from the good pleasure and free grace of God. Had Adam fulfilled the condition of life in the first covenant, the Lord, instead of having been a debtor to him for his obedience, would have been a debtor only to His own grace and faithfulness in the promise. It is manifest, then, that there could have been no real merit in the perfect obedience of man, nor so much as the smallest proportion between it and the promised reward. If Adam had performed the condition of that covenant, he could not have expected eternal life upon any ground except this: that God had graciously promised it on that condition.
The peculiar form of the covenant of works, or that which distinguishes it from every other contract, does not consist in the connection between the precept and the promise; but, in the manner of that connection. Obedience to the precept is made to give a contractual title to the life promised. Eternal life is made so to depend on personal and perfect obedience, that without this other ground. But if the obedience be performed, the life promised
becomes due, in virtue of the covenant. This being the manner of the condition ,between the precept and the promise, of the first covenant; when this covenant was broken, that connection was as far as ever, from being dissolved. Eternal life, according to the covenant, will still follow upon perfect, personal, and continual obedience. It
still continues true, “That the man who doeth those things shall live by them.” But since no such thing as perfect obedience, is to be found now, among any of the sons of men; no man can have a title to life, according to the promise of that covenant. Thus, the law has become weak, not by any change in itself; but because men have not yielded perfect obedience to it. The reason why it cannot now justify a man the sight of God or satisfy him with eternal life is because he cannot satisfy it with personal and perfect obedience.
Although eternal life was, in the covenant of works, promised to Adam and his posterity on condition of his perfect obedience, and that only, yet a man is to be counted a legalist or self-righteous if, while he does not pretend that his obedience is perfect, he yet relies on it for a title to life. Self-righteous men have, in all ages, set aside
as impossible to be fulfilled by them that condition of the covenant of works which God had imposed on Adam, and have framed for themselves various models of that covenant which, though they are far from being institutions of God, and stand upon terms lower than perfect obedience, yet are of the nature of the covenant of works. The
unbelieving Jews who sought righteousness by the works of the law were not so very ignorant or presumptuous as to pretend to perfect obedience. Neither did those professed Christians in Galatia who desired to be under the law, and to be justified by the law, of whom the apostle therefore testified that they had “fallen from grace”(Galatians 5:4), presume to plead that they could yield perfect obedience. On the contrary, their public profession of Christianity showed that they had some sense of their need of Christ’s righteousness. But their great error was that they did not believe that the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone was sufficient to entitle them to the justification of life; and therefore they depended for justification partly on their own obedience to the moral and
ceremonial law. It was this, and not their pretensions to perfect obedience, that the apostle had in view when he blamed them for cleaving to the law of works, and for expecting justification by the works of the law. By relying for justification partly on their own works of obedience to the moral and ceremonial laws, they, as the apostle informed them, were fallen from grace; Christ had become of no effect to them. And they were “debtors to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3-4). By depending for justification partly on their imperfect obedience to the law, they framed the law into a covenant of works, and such a covenant of works as would allow for imperfect instead of perfect works; and by relying partly on the righteousness of Christ, they mingled the law with the gospel and works with faith in the affair of justification. Thus they perverted both the law and the gospel, and formed them for themselves into a motley covenant of works.
The great design of our apostle, then, was to draw them off from their false views of the law; to direct them to right conceptions of it in its covenant form in which it can admit of no personal obedience as a condition of life, but such as is perfect—and so to destroy their legal hope as well as to confute their wrong notions. By the reasonings of the apostle upon this subject, it is manifest that every evangelical, as well as every legal, work of ours is excluded from forming even the smallest part of a man’s righteousness for justification in the sight of God. It is evident that even faith itself as a man’s act or work, and so comprised in the works of the law, is thereby excluded from being any part of his justifying righteousness (see the Confession of Faith XI:I). It is one thing to be justified by faith merely as an instrument by which a man receives the righteousness of Christ, and another to
be justified for faith as an act or work of the law. If a sinner, then, commands of the law for a title to eternal life, he seeks to be justified by the works of the law as much as if his works were perfect. If he depends, either in whole or in part, on his faith and repentance for a right to any promised blessing, he thereby so annexes that promise to the commands to believe and repent as to form them for himself into a covenant of works. Building his confidence before God upon his faith, repentance, and other acts of obedience to the law, he places them in Christ’s stead as his grounds of right to the promise; and so he demonstrates himself to be of the works of the law, and so
to be under the curse (Galatians 3:10).
3. Last, in the law as a covenant of works, there is moreover a penal sanction, an express threatening of death: spiritual, temporal and eternal. This dreadful threatening was annexed to the positive precept not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as comprehending all the precepts of the natural or moral law. “Of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of that: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). “The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Seeing the natural law was promulgated to Adam— who though a holy creature was yet a mutable creature, and liable to fall away from God—not
only was a promise of eternal life in case of obedience, but a threatening of eternal death in case of disobedience, added to it. Thus it was turned into a covenant or law of works, of which the law of the ten commandments was, and is still, the matter. Accordingly, in its covenant form, it not only says to every man who is under it,“Do this and live,” but, “Do this or die; do this on pain of death in all its dreadful extent.” This law of works has a twofold power: a power to justify persons if they yield perfect obedience, and a power to condemn them if in the smallest instance they disobey. It said toAdam, and it says to every descendant of Adam, “If you offend but in\ one instance, dying you shall die.” It is to every sinner the ministration of condemnation and of death. That awful sanction is
founded in the justice of God, and is as much according to His mind and will as the precept of the law itself. His mind and will are unchangeable; consequently, no sooner did man become a sinner than he became subject to the first and the second death which divine justice and faithfulness were bound to see inflicted upon him. One single transgression has forever cut him off from all possibility of attaining life by the law. And since all have sinned, consequently, “by the works of the law shall no flesh living be justified.” The law of works has pronounced all the race of Adam guilty, has condemned them to eternal punishment, and has not made the smallest provision for their deliverance.
That penal sanction annexed to the law of the covenant was most reasonable. There were indeed many other motives which might have induced Adam to continue obedient, but as he was naturally a mutable creature, and as yet was only in a state of probation, his Creator had sufficient reason to be jealous of him. The Lord, therefore, in order to guard His grace and condescension from being despised and trampled on, annexed such a penalty to His righteous
law as, if duly considered, should serve to terrify man from violating His gracious covenant. Death, especially spiritual and eternal death, could not but appear to Adam, whose knowledge and holiness were perfect, to be of all objects the most horrible. Nothing could appear better calculated to deter him from transgressing the covenant than
the awful consideration that, as he was already bound by the precept to perform perfect obedience, so he should, if he disobeyed, be as firmly bound by the curse to suffer endless punishment. Besides, the punishment of death in all its dreadful extent and duration is no more than the smallest sin against the infinite Majesty of heaven justly deserves. It is due to the sinner; and immutable justice requires that every man should have all that is due to him. “The wages of sin is death ” (Romans 6:23).
It is evident, then, that the promise of life in case of obedience, and the denunciation of death in the event of disobedience, annexed to the law of creation, made it to Adam a covenant of works proposed. Nothing further was necessary to complete this covenant with him, as the head and representative of his natural posterity, than his
consent to each of those articles. Since he was created in the image of God, he could not but discern clearly the equity and advantage of that divine covenant, and so approve and consent to it. His consenting to it, accordingly, is hinted in these words of Eve to the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’ ” (Genesis 3:2-3). Adam then consented to the precept, promise, and threatening of the first covenant. And in his consent to it, as well as in God’s approbation of the tenor of it, the formal obligation of it
consisted; so far as that was added to the previous obligations under which he lay, by the law of creation. In consenting to the precept, he bound himself to perfect obedience as the condition of eternal life to himself and his posterity, as well as to believe whatever God should afterwards reveal, and to do whatever He should command. By
consenting to the promise, he agreed that he would have eternal life on no other condition than that of personal and perfect obedience; and that he would never have eternal life unless he performed and persevered in such obedience. In consenting to the threatening in case of disobedience, he bound himself to renounce, in that event, all his pretensions to life by that covenant; and he obliged himself to suffer the full execution of the penalty denounced. By thus approving of and consenting to that proposed contract, the form of it was completed; and the obligations of it became so firm that the one contracting party could not retract without the consent of the other.
Since Adam, in consenting to the penal sanction of the first covenant, bound himself and his natural posterity never to have eternal life but on condition of his perfect obedience; and since he failed in this obedience, and so fell with all his natural descendants under the begun execution of the penalty, no sinner under that broken
covenant is bound by it to seek eternal life by his own performances. The penalty of the covenant to which Adam, as the representative of his posterity, consented is by his transgression now become absolute; the penalty binds the unregenerate sinner as firmly as does the precept itself. Instead, then, of obliging him to seek eternal life for
his obedience, it binds him to suffer eternal death for his disobedience. His consent in the first Adam to the penalty, he is not at liberty to recall unless he is released by God, the other contracting party. He is therefore as firmly bound, according to the constitution of the covenant, to endure the full execution of the penalty, unless
God Himself delivers him from it, as to yield perfect obedience to the. The curse of the law is so bound upon him that it would be a second breach of the covenant, to seek to elude the execution of, so long as he desires to continue under that covenant. But to seek eternal life by his own righteousness is to try to elude that execution.
No obligation therefore lies on a sinner under the covenant of works to seek eternal life for his own obedience: on the contrary, it is utterly unlawful for him to attempt this. That very contract which afforded man, while innocent, a prospect of life, now that he is guilty debars him from all expectation of it. The covenant of works left innocent
man at liberty to expect life upon his perfect obedience, but did not oblige him to seek it on that ground, but only on the ground of the faithfulness of God in the promise in which He graciously annexed eternal life to perfect obedience (Matthew 19:16-17). And if it did not oblige innocent man to seek life on the ground even of perfect
obedience, how can it bind guilty man to seek it on the account of imperfect obedience? The law as a covenant, indeed, leaves the sinner at liberty, nay, it commands him to receive the righteousness of the second Adam offered to him in the gospel, and to seek as well as to expect eternal life on the ground of this consummate righteousness. But so long as he continues to reject this righteousness the law continues its obligation on him,both to perform perfect obedience and to suffer the Infinite execution of the curse. The connection established by the covenant between perfect obedience and life, and between the smallest instance of disobedience and death, is immutable and eternal. And therefore no sinner can otherwise be delivered from the bond of that covenant than by receiving and presenting to the law of it the perfect and glorious righteousness of the second Adam, which answers fully all
its high demands (Romans 10:4 and 7:6). If he labors to escape the death threatened, and to procure the life promised in it, by his own righteousness, his labor is to no purpose but to increase his guilt and aggravate his condemnation (Romans 9:30-32). Before I conclude this section, it may be proper to remark that the moral law, in the revelation which is given of it in Scripture, is almost constantly set forth to us in its covenant form as proposed to the first Adam. And it appears that the infinitely wise and holy Lord God has left it on record in that form in order that sinners of mankind might be convinced by it not only of their sinfulness and misery under the dominion of it, but of the utter impossibility of their ever obtaining justification and eternal life by any righteousness of their own (Romans 3:20).
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Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2024 16:25:33 GMT -5
Section 3. The law in the hand of Christ the blessed
Mediator as a rule of life to all true believers
The authority and obligation of the law of nature, which is the same
as the law of the Ten Commandments, being founded in the nature of
God, the Almighty Creator and sovereign Ruler of men, are necessary,
immutable, and eternal. They were the same before the law received
the form of a covenant of works; that they are, after it has received
this form; and that they are, and will continue to be, after it has
dropped this form. It is divested of its covenant form to all who are
vitally united to the last Adam, who have communion with Him in
His righteousness, and who are instated in the covenant of grace. But
though it is to them wholly denuded of its covenant form, yet it has
lost nothing of its original authority and obligation. Now that it is
taken in under the covenant of grace, and made the instrument of
government in the spiritual kingdom of Christ, it retains all the
authority over believers that, as a covenant of works, it has over
unregenerate sinners. It is given to believers as a rule to direct them
to holy obedience. It has the sovereign and infinite authority of
Jehovah as a Creator as well as a Redeemer to afford it binding force.
His nature is infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably holy; and
therefore His law, which is a transcript of His holiness, must retain
invariably and eternally all its original authority (Leviticus 11:44; 1
Peter 1:15-16). The law as a rule, then, is not a new preceptive law,
but the old law, which was from the beginning, issued to believers
under a new form.
This law issues to true Christians from Christ, the glorious Mediator
of the New Covenant, and from God as their Creator, Proprietor,
Benefactor, and covenant God. It proceeds immediately from Jesus
Christ, the blessed Mediator between God and men. It is taken in
under the covenant of grace, and, in the hand of Christ, the Mediator
of that covenant, it is given to all who believe in Him, and who are
justified by faith, as the only rule of their obedience. The Apostle
Paul accordingly calls it “the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). It is a law
which Christ has clearly explained, and which He has vindicated
from the false glosses of the scribes and Pharisees; His new
commandment which He has given and enforced by His own
example, and whose obligation on the subjects of His spiritual
kingdom He has increased by His redemption of them from their
bondage to sin and Satan. It is a law which He, according to the
promise of His gracious covenant inscribes by His Holy Spirit on
their hearts; a law too which He calls His yoke, and which, in
comparison to the law of works, is a light and easy yoke (Matthew 11:29-30).
While the law as a rule of life to believers is issued forth immediately
from Christ to them, it proceeds at the same time from God as their
sovereign Lord, their Creator, Proprietor, and covenant God. God the
Father said concerning Messiah, “Behold I have given Him for a
witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people' (Isaiah
55:4). All the sovereign authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit is, according to the everlasting covenant, vested in Him as
God-man, Mediator, and King of Zion. In Exodus 23: 21, Jehovah
gives this solemn charge to the Israelites, in reference to Messiah, the
uncreated Angel of the covenant: “Beware of Him and obey His
voice, provoke Him not; for My name is in Him.” It is as if He had
said, “My essence, My sovereignty, My authority, My law, are in Him,
yea, all the fullness of the Godhead is in Him; and in Him only will
obedience to My law be acceptable to Me.” The name of the Father is
so in Him that His voice in the law is the Father’s voice, for it follows
in verse 22, “But if thou shalt indeed obey His voice, and do all that I
speak.” To the same purpose the Apostle Paul said of himself that he
was “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” (1
Corinthians 9:21). To be “not without law to God” can mean no less
than to be under the law of God. Therefore, to be under the law of
Christ is the same as to be under the law of God. Believers, by being
under the law as a rule in the hand of Christ, or, which is the same
thing, by being under the law to Christ are under the law of God.
When they are under the law of the Ten Commandments as the law
of Christ, they are under it as enforced by all the sovereign authority
of God. The original authority of the moral law is not in the smallest
degree lessened by the believer’s reception of it not as the law or
covenant of works, but as the law of Christ standing in the covenant
of grace. Its original obligation proceeding from the infinite authority
of the adorable Trinity is inseparable from it, and cannot possibly be
in the least impaired, by its being conveyed to believers by and from
the Lord Jesus. For He, equally with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
is, in His divine nature, the eternal Jehovah, “the Most High over all
the earth.” He is God over all, and the Creator of “all things . . . that
are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible”
(Colossians 1:16). He is also in the Father, and the Father is in Him
(John 14:11). As God’s authority to judge is not lessened by His
having committed all judgment to the Son, so His authority to
command is not, and cannot be, in the least diminished by His
having given Christ for a commander to the people.
That the holy law of God should be given to believers in and through
the Mediator, and not immediately by God Himself, is necessary.
When the divine law was at first given to man, he was the friend of
God, and so he could receive the law immediately from Him in a
manner consistent both with the honor of God and the safety of his
own soul. But now that man has sinned against the Lord and has
become an object of His infinite wrath, and that God has assumed
the character of an offended Sovereign and an avenging Judge; now
that the law as a covenant of works has become the dreadful
instrument of divine indignation on account of sin, the guilty sinner
cannot regard either God or His righteous law but as an object of the
greatest terror to him. It was requisite, then, that a Mediator should
interpose both between the offended Lawgiver and the sinner, and
also between the violated law and the sinner who, by satisfying the
justice of the one, and by answering the demands of the other, might
obtain free access for the guilty criminal to both.
Outside of Christ the blessed Mediator, a holy God cannot, with the
safety of His honor, have any dealing with a sinful creature; but in
and by Christ He can, consistent with His own infinite honor, and
that of His holy law, issue forth His commandments to believers and
receive their sincere obedience. Accordingly, the great Mediator,
having admitted believers to communion with Himself in His surety righteousness,
writes by His Spirit the law on their hearts, and in His
Father’s name makes it the instrument of His government of them
and the rule of their duty to Him. And as the same law is called “the
law of nature,” because in His creation it was inlaid in the nature of
the first man, so it may be called “the law of renewed nature” because
in the hand of Christ, and as standing under the covenant of grace, it
is interwoven with the new nature of all who are “created again in
Him to good works.” Since it is only in Christ, then, that the offended
Majesty of heaven can give His holy law to a sinner, and since it is
only in Christ that a sinner can with safety receive and obey such a
law, it may well be called “the law of Christ.” Considered as the law of
Christ’s justified, sanctified, and peculiar people, it is not the law of
an absolute God, or of God out of Christ, but the law of God in Christ.
Were believers to keep the moral law only as the law of nature, and
without any relation to the Mediator, their obedience would be but
natural religion; were they to obey it merely as a covenant of works
their obedience would be but legal righteousness; but when they
obey it in its relation to Christ and the covenant of grace, their
conformity of heart and life to it is true holiness, acceptable to God
by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5).
The precepts of the law as a rule of life to true Christians are the
same with those of the law as a covenant of works, and they require
the same perfection of obedience. The Ten Commandments are the
precepts of the divine law, both as a covenant of works to the
unregenerate and as a rule of duty to the saints. But while they are
issued to believers with all the sovereign authority that originally
belonged to them, the obligations under which believers lie to yield
obedience to them are greatly increased by the grace of the
Redeemer and the mercies of redemption. If the saints are obliged as
creatures, they are still more firmly bound as new creatures to keep
those commandments. If they were formerly under firm obligations
to obey them in their covenant form as the precepts of God out of
Christ, they are now under additional obligations to yield obedience
to them as the commands of God as their own God and Father in
Christ. Does the grace displayed in the first covenant oblige all who
are under that covenant to perform perfect obedience? The
exceeding riches of grace in the second covenant lay all who are
instated in it under additional ties to give perfect obedience. If
sinners under the covenant of works are bound to yield perfect
obedience for life; believers within the bond of the covenant of grace
are under still higher obligations to perform perfect obedience from
life, and for the glory of Him who, by fulfilling all the righteousness
of the law in its covenant form, has merited eternal life for them. The
law as a rule, then, enforced by all the sovereign authority of God,
both as Creator and Redeemer, requires believers to perform not
sincere obedience only, but perfect and perpetual obedience. The
great Redeemer gives this high command to all His redeemed: “Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”
(Matthew 5:48). Accordingly, real believers, instead of resting
satisfied with sincere obedience to that law, consider their want of
absolute perfection in obedience as their sin, and bewail it as such.
True Christians, and none else, are under the law as a rule in the
hand of Christ. The Apostle Paul exhorted the brethren in the
churches of Galatia thus: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so
fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). The endearing relations in
which believers stand to Christ, and to God in Him, as well as the
inestimable blessings of salvation conferred on them, and the
exceeding great and precious promises given them, all require and
enforce their obligation to abound in holy obedience to the law as a
rule ( 1 Peter 2:4 and 5:9; Titus 2:11-14; 2 Corinthians 7:1). Believers,
before the incarnation of Christ, were as much under the binding
force of it as believers now are (Luke 1:73-75).
The great design of God in giving this law in the hand of Christ to His
people is not that by their obedience to it they may procure for
themselves a right to eternal life, but that it may direct and oblige
them to walk worthy of their union with Christ, of their justification
in Him, of their legal title to and begun possession of life eternal, and
of God Himself as their God in Him. Their conformity of heart and
life to its commands, instead of procuring their title to salvation, is a
principal part of their salvation already begun, and a necessary
preparative for the consummation of it through eternity (Hebrews
12:28; 1 Peter 2:9).
The law as a rule of life to believers, especially in this view of it, is
very different from the law as a covenant of works. The precept of the
law as a covenant is “Do and live,” but the command of the law as a
rule is “live and do”; the law of works says, “Do or you shall be
condemned to die,” but the law in the hand of Christ says, “You are
delivered from condemnation; therefore do.” The command of the
former is “Do perfectly that you may have a right to eternal life,” but
that of the latter is, “You already have begun possession of eternal
life, as well as the promise of the complete possession of it, therefore
do in such a manner as to advance daily toward perfection.” By the
former, a man is commanded to do in his own strength;
but by the latter he is required to do in the strength that is in Christ
Jesus. The Lord Jesus says to every believer, “My grace is sufficient
for you; My strength is made perfect in weakness; therefore do.” The
commandments of the law, both as a covenant and as a rule, are
materially, but are not formally, the same.
Although the law as a rule of duty to believers requires perfect
obedience from them; yet it admits of God’s accepting their sincere
obedience performed in faith, though it is imperfect. It admits of His
accepting this obedience, not indeed as any part of their justifying
righteousness, not as the foundation of His acceptance of their
persons as righteous, but as the fruit and evidence of their being
vitally united to His beloved Son as Jehova, their Righteousness, and
of their being already accepted in Him (Ephesians 1:6; Hebrews 13:16).
Since true believers are already irrevocably interested in the
covenant of grace, in the righteousness of Christ, and in the favor of
God; and since they have in Christ, and on the ground of His
righteousness imputed to them, a complete security against eternal
death and a full title to eternal life; the law as the law of Christ has no
sanction of judicial rewards or punishments. It has no promise of
eternal life or threatening of eternal death annexed to it. The form of
the covenant of works, indeed, is eternally binding on all who live
and die under that violated covenant, but because Christ, as last
Adam, has answered all the demands of it for believers, they are
delivered from the law in that form (Romans 7:4-6).
The law which believers are under is the law of Christ, and of God in
Christ, which has no promise of eternal life to them for their
obedience to it. The promise of eternal life to the saints is the
promise of the covenant of grace or the gospel, and not of the law, as
a rule of duty. Eternal life is promised to them not in consideration of
their sincere obedience to the law as a rule of life, but on account of
Christ’s perfect obedience to it as a covenant of works received by
faith and imputed by God. It is promised to them not as a reward of
debt for their sincere obedience, but as “the gift of God through Jesus
Christ .our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The righteousness of Jesus Christ
imputed to them gives them a perfect title to life; they are already
heirs of it, “and joint heirs with Christ.” They have begun possession
of it, and have the gracious promise of the gospel that they shall, in
due time, attain the perfect and everlasting possession.
There is therefore no need that a promise of eternal life should be
annexed to the law as a rule of duty, to be fulfilled to believers on the
ground of their obedience to that law. And, indeed, it cannot be
annexed to it; for since the law as a rule cannot require less than
perfect obedience, and since believers cannot in this life yield perfect
obedience to its precepts, it cannot justify them or promise life to
them for their obedience. Neither can they begin to perform even
sincere obedience to it until, in union with Christ, they are already
justified and fully entitled to life eternal. Accordingly, we are
informed in Scripture that believers are justified by grace, and by no
law or work of a law, whether it is of the law as a covenant or the law
as a rule. “That no man is justified by a law in the sight of God, it is
evident” (Galatians 3:11), and “Christ is become of no effect unto you,
whosoever of you are justified by a law” (Galatians 5:4). “Therefore
we conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of a
law” (Romans 3:28—the original word used for “law” in these
passages, I have taken liberty to translate literally so that the
apostle’s meaning may appear more clearly). No promise of life,
then, is made to the sincere obedience of believers to the law of
Christ; otherwise their title to life would be founded not entirely on
the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, but partly, if not
wholly, on works done by themselves.
As no promise of eternal life belongs to the law as a rule of duty to
believers, so no threatening of eternal death belongs to it. Not that
the law considered as a covenant of works is stripped of its sanction;
the penal sanction of it in that form, is eternal and must be eternally
endured by all who die under it. But because the whole penal
sanction of it was wholly endured by Christ—the Surety of those who
believe on Him, and because His infinite satisfaction for all their sins
is placed to their account—that law, being satisfied, cannot now
condemn them. And as the law in its covenant form cannot condemn
them, or require from them a double payment for the same debt;
neither can the law, in the hand of Christ, as a rule. No divine law can
condemn them. “There is now no condemnation to them who are in
Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Believers are perfectly and irreversibly
justified; and therefore, though their iniquities deserve eternal
wrath, yet they can no more make them actually liable to that wrath.
It is the peculiar privilege of believers only, who are already justified,
and so set forever beyond the reach of condemnation, to be under the
law in the hand of Christ. But were a threatening of eternal death
annexed to the law as a rule in His hand, every time that the believer
transgressed this law it would lay him anew under condemnation;
and as he every moment falls short of perfection in his obedience, he
must inevitably be every moment under condemnation to eternal
wrath. But, instead of this, he always continues in a state of
justification and “never comes into condemnation.” “Whom God did
predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He
also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified. . . .
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that
justifieth; who is he that condemneth?” (Romans 8:29-30, 34).
“Their sins and their iniquities, will I remember no more” (Hebrews
8:12). Though the law as a rule of duty, then, standing under the
covenant of grace as the instrument by which the Lord Jesus rules
the subjects of His spiritual kingdom, has lost nothing of its original
authority to direct and bind them, even to perfect obedience, yet it
has no promise of eternal life to them for their obedience, and no
threatening of eternal death for their disobedience. Therefore, as the
law in its covenant form can neither justify nor condemn believers,
so neither can the law as a rule of life (Larger Catechism, Question 97).
But though the law as a rule of duty to believers has no sanction of
judicial rewards and punishments, yet it has a sanction of gracious
rewards and paternal chastisements. A promise of gracious rewards,
or rewards of grace, to believers in the way of their obedience is
annexed to the law in the hand of Christ. In order to dispose and
encourage them to obedience, God promises, on Christ’s account,
gracious rewards to them, such as the light of His gracious
countenance, sensible and comfortable communion with Him, peace
and joy in the Holy Ghost, the assurance of their personal interest in
Christ, freedom from trouble of mind, hope in their death, and
degrees of glory in eternity, corresponding probably to the degree of
their holy activity in time (Psalms 19:11; 2 Corinthians 1:12; 2 Timothy 4: 7-8).
To the law as a rule in the hand of Christ belongs also a threatening
of paternal chastisements. In order to deter believers from
disobedience, as well as to promote in them the mortification of sin,
the Lord threatens that, although He will not cast them into hell for
their sins, yet He will permit hell, as it were, to enter their
consciences; that He will visit them with a series of outward
afflictions; that He will deprive them of that sensible communion
with Him which they sometime enjoyed; and that He will afflict them
with bitterness instead of sweetness, and with terror instead of
comfort (Psalms 89:30-33; 1 Corinthians 11:30-32; Hebrews 12:6—
11). These chastisements are, to a believer, no less awful, and much
more forcible restraints from sin than even the prospect of vindictive
wrath would be. A filial fear of them will do more to influence him to
the practice of holiness than all the slavish fears of hell can do. A
fear, lest he should be deprived of that sweetness of communion with
God with which he is favored, will constrain him to say to his lusts, as
the fig-tree in Jotham’s parable, “Should 1 forsake my sweetness, and
my good fruit, and go to be promoted over you? Shall I leave the
spiritual delight which I have had in communion with my God and
Savior, and have fellowship with you?” Or if, for his iniquities, he is
already under the dreadful frowns of his heavenly Father, his
recollection of the comfort which he formerly enjoyed, and of which
he is now deprived, will make him say, “I will go and return to my
first husband; for then was it better with me than now” (Hosea 2:7).
It is plain that no sanction but this is suitable to the happy state of believers.
They, in union and communion with the blessed
Redeemer, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and instated in the
covenant of grace, in which they “shall never perish, but have
everlasting life.” So long, indeed, as they are imperfect in holiness,
and their temper and practice subject in change, such promises and
threatenings are necessary. But it is manifest that their necessity is
occasioned by the remainders of sin in the saints, who require to be
treated as children under age. It is necessary in their state of
imperfection that they be influenced to obedience by the promises
and threatenings of the law of Christ; for though their being excited
to obedience by these promises and threatenings is neither servile
nor slavish, yet it is childish. It is not suitable to the state of one who
has “come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
When believers become perfect, they will perform obedience as freely
as the angels in heaven do, without being in the least influenced to it
by promises or threatenings. And the nearer they come to perfection
in holiness, the more free and disinterested will their obedience be.
But as long as they are in a state of imperfection, it is their duty, in
order to advance in holiness, to have respect in their obedience to
what the law of Christ promises and threatens to them. Promises of
gracious rewards, and threats of paternal chastisements, properly
belong to the covenant of grace, which has no proper penalty rather
than to the law as a rule. They are implied in the blessings promised
in that covenant, or at least are means of accomplishing the promises
of it. But, seeing the law as a rule is received into the covenant of
grace as the instrument of Christ’s government of His spiritual
subjects, those promises and threats may be said, though not with
strict propriety, to belong or be annexed to the law in that form.
It appears evident from what has been said that though the Ten
Commandments are the substance of the law of nature, yet they do
not contain the whole of this law. The law of nature, inscribed on the
heart of man in his creation, had a penal sanction. Although a penal
sanction, as is evident from the case of glorified saints and confirmed
angels, who are and who will remain eternally under the law of nature,
is not inseparable from that law, yet such a sanction belongs to it.
The devout and attentive reader may hence discern the difference
between heathen morality, pharisaic righteousness, and true
holiness. Heathen morality is external obedience to the law of nature,
and may be termed “natural religion.” Pharisaic righteousness is
hypocritical obedience to the law as a covenant of works, and is
usually called “legal righteousness,” or “the works of the law.” True
holiness is spiritual and sincere obedience to the law as a rule of life
in the hand of the blessed Mediator, and is commonly called
“evangelical holiness,” or “true godliness.” True believers are the only
persons who obey the law in its relation to Christ and to the covenant
of grace; and their acts of obedience are the only spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5). The holy Lord God
does not account Himself glorified by any obedience from the sons of
men unless that which they perform to Him is in Christ. For it is the
will of the Father, the Almighty Creator and sovereign Ruler of the
world, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor
Himself; and that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
It may be justly inferred from the preceding doctrine that the
distinction of the divine law, especially into the law as a covenant of
works and as a rule of life, is a very important distinction. It is, as the
attentive reader has seen, a scriptural distinction; and it is necessary
in the hand of the Spirit to qualify believers for understanding clearly
the grace and glory of the gospel, as well as the acceptable manner of
performing every duty required in the law. To distinguish truly and
clearly between the law as a covenant and the law as a rule is, as
Luther expressed it, “the key which opens the hidden treasure of the
gospel.” No sooner had the Spirit of truth given Luther a glimpse of
that distinction than he declared that he seemed to be admitted into
Paradise, and that the whole face of the Scripture was changed for
him. Indeed, without a spiritual and true knowledge of that
distinction, a man can neither discern, nor love, nor obey acceptably
the truth as it is in Jesus. Nay, if the law as a covenant were not to be
distinguished from the law as a rule in the hand of the Mediator, it
would inevitably follow that believers are still under the law as a
covenant of works; that they ought still to regard God not as their
gracious God and Father, but as their angry and avenging Judge; and
that their sins are still to be considered as transgressions only of the
covenant of works, and as rendering them, notwithstanding their
justification, actually subject to the curse and revenging wrath of God
—contrary to Scripture (Romans 6:14, 7:1-6, and 8:1-2) and to our
Confession of Faith (XIX: 1,6).
As an evidence that all unregenerate persons are under the dominion
of the law as a covenant of works, the natural bent of their hearts in
all their views respecting the means of salvation is to the way of that
covenant. They all desire to be under the law of works. All who have
embraced either one or another of the false religions that are in the
world agree at least in this principle: It is by doing that men are to
live. Hence, when the Lord opens the eyes of a man to see that
horrible gulf of sin and misery into which the first Adam plunged
him, he is strongly inclined to exert himself for deliverance in the
way of the covenant of works. He struggles hard to forsake his sins
and to perform his duties, hoping that by his own performances he
will become so righteous as to pacify the wrath of God and to procure
for himself eternal life. Ah, ignorant, proud, vain attempt! This,
however, he resolutely persists in doing until he is made to despair of
ever being able to procure salvation for himself in the way of that
covenant. Indeed, this natural bent of the depraved heart toward the
way of the law as a covenant, together with deep ignorance of the
high demands of the law in that form, is the source of all the self righteousness that is in the world.
To take sinners off from this to a cordial reliance only on the righteousness of the second Adam for all
their title to salvation, is a special part of the Holy Spirit’s work in
conviction and conversion; and to do it requires a greater exertion of
His almighty power than even to create a world.
From what has been said, we may also see that there are two sorts of
sinners who offend more especially against the law in its covenant
form, namely legalists and antinomians. Legalists, on the one hand,
transgress against it by seeking to be justified by their own pretended
obedience to it. Antinomians, on the other hand, offend against it by
despising the divine authority and obligation of it. The former
transgress against the form of the law as a covenant by depending on
their own obedience for justification; the latter offend against the
matter of it, or the Ten Commandments, as vested with all the
infinite authority which belongs to it, by disregarding that high
authority. Legalists contend that believers are under the law even as
it is the covenant of works; antinomians, on the contrary, assert that
believers are not only not under it as a covenant, but not under it
even as a rule of duty. These two assertions are not more contrary to
one another than they both are to the truth as it is in Jesus. In the
Scriptures, we are informed that, believers are delivered from the law
as a covenant of works, but that they are under it, and delight to be
under it, as a rule of life. Indeed, to affirm that they are freed from it
in its covenant form implies that they are under it in another form.
Does the law in its covenant form command every sinner under it
who hears the gospel to believe and repent? Then it is of
inexpressible importance to every sinner to believe that it does. If the
law as a covenant of works does not require of every sinner under it
who hears the gospel faith and repentance, it will follow that faith
and repentance, as acts or works, cannot be excluded from being
grounds of a sinner’s justification in the sight of God, since on that
supposition they cannot be denominated works of the law. Under
this character, all the sinner’s works of obedience are, in Scripture,
excluded from being causes of his justification before God (Galatians 2:16).
Doubtless, if the moral law, or law as a covenant, taken into
the administration of the covenant of grace, does not require faith
and repentance, then there must be a new law to command them.
Besides, if faith and repentance, which, as some have said, contain all
that is necessary to salvation, are commanded only by a new and
gospel law, then the moral law is unnecessary—and so a wide door
will be opened to gross antinomianism. Sinners, then, are
commanded by the moral law as a covenant, and by no other law, to
believe and repent; and saints are commanded by the moral law as a
rule of life, and by no other, to advance in the exercise of faith and
repentance.
To conclude, is it so that the moral law has lost nothing of its original
authority and obligation by being, to believers, divested of its
covenant form? Then the supposition that the sovereign authority of
God in it is laid aside, or that the original obligation of it is, in the
least degree, weakened by its being issued to believers as the law of
Christ is utterly groundless. Such a supposition reflects great
dishonor on the glorious Mediator; for is not our Lord Jesus, equally
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, “Jehovah, the Most High over all
the earth?” Does not all the fullness of the Godhead dwell in Him
bodily? Is not the name or infinite authority of God in Him? Is it not
by Him that all things were created, and that they all consist? How
then is it possible that the original and infinite authority of the divine
law can, in the smallest degree, be lessened by its issuing to true
believers from Him who is God over all, the great God our Savior?
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Post by Admin on Feb 22, 2024 11:10:29 GMT -5
The Law of God as Promulgated to the
Israelites from Mount Sinai
After the Israelites, the peculiar people of God had, during their long
continuance and grievous bondage in Egypt, become grossly ignorant
of the precepts and penalties of His righteous law, He graciously
condescended to reveal it to them in express terms, and with awful
solemnity, from Mount Sinai.
In this publication of His law to them, He summed it up in ten
commandments; and therefore it is commonly called “the law of the
Ten Commandments. While it is largely set forth and explained in
the whole Word of God, it is briefly comprehended in ten words or
commandments (Deuteronomy 10:4). It was God in the person of the
Son who, from the top of Mount Sinai, spoke these words. For we
read that the Prophet whom Jehovah was to raise up to the children
of Israel of their brethren like unto Moses, was “the angel who spake
to him in the Mount Sinai'(Acts 7:38). And the Apostle Paul said,
“See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh,” namely “Jesus the
Mediator of the New Covenant, for if they escaped not who refused
Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn
away from Him that speaketh from heaven” (Hebrews 12:25-26).
After the Son of God had, in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel,
spoken those
commandments out of the midst of the fire, He wrote them on two
tablets of stone. Moses informs us that “the tables were written on
both their sides; that, on the one side and on the other, they were
written” (Exodus 32:15). They were filled with writing on both sides
in order, perhaps, to teach us that when this law is written on the
hearts of believers they are sanctified wholly (1 Thessalonians 5:23),
and that nothing must be either added to the words of the law or
taken away from them. It is remarkable that the Ten
Commandments were, by the finger of God, written on tables of
stone twice.
After the first two tables had been broken by Moses beneath the
mount, the Lord was graciously pleased to write on two other tables
the same words that He had written on the first (Exodus 34:1). His
writing of the law twice, without the smallest variation, and that on
tables of stone, was doubtless intended to represent to us, as well as
to the Israelites, the immutable authority, and eternal obligation of
that law. When the moral law was promulgated to Israel from Mount
Sinai or Horeb, we are informed that it was given them in the form of
a covenant. Moses said to them, “The Lord our God made a covenant
with us in Horeb” (Deuteronomy 5:2). “Take heed unto yourselves,
lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which He made
with you” (Deuteronomy 4:23). Hence, the tables of stone are called
“the tables of the covenant,” and the words engraven on them “the
words of the covenant.”
The Ten Commandments, accordingly, were published from Sinai in
the form of a covenant, or federal transaction. The Sinaic transaction
was a mixed dispensation. In it, the covenant of grace was repeated
and published; the covenant of works was awfully displayed in
subservience thereto; and a national covenant between God and the
Israelites was also made as an appendage to the covenant of grace.
Accordingly, the law of the Ten Commandments was thence
promulgated by the Son of God, the glorious Mediator, as a rule of
life to believers in a manner suited to the covenant of grace. The
same law was repeated and displayed to the Israelites in the form of
the covenant of works; and it was published to them as the matter of
a national covenant, or covenant of peculiarity, between God and
them. I shall endeavor briefly to consider the moral law in each of
these views.
Section 1. The Covenant of Grace, and of the Ten
Commandments, as the rule of duty to believers according
to it, as published from Mount Sinai
The covenant of grace, both in itself and in the intention of God, was
the principal part of the Sinai transaction. It was therefore published
first, as appears from these words in the preface to the
commandments: “I am the Lord thy God.” These gracious words, in
which Jehovah exhibited Himself to the Israelites as their God, were
spoken to them as His peculiar people, the natural seed of Abraham,
and as typical of all His spiritual seed (Galatians 3:16-17). To this
gracious offer or grant, which Jehovah made of Himself to them as
their God and Redeemer, the Ten Commandments were annexed as a
rule of duty to them as His professed people, and especially to true
believers among them as His spiritual seed. In virtue of His having
engaged to answer for them all the demands of the law as a covenant
of works, He repeats and promulgates it to them as a rule of life in
the covenant of grace. Instead of saying to them, “Keep My
commandments, so that I may become your God,” on the contrary
He said to each of them, “I am the Lord thy God, therefore keep My
commandments.”
This is not the form of the law as it is the covenant of works, but the
form of it only as the law of Christ, and as standing in the covenant of
grace. But more particularly that, in the Sinaic transaction, the
covenant of grace, with the law annexed to it as a rule of life, was
repeated and delivered to the Israelites appears evident to me from
the following considerations:
1. The Ten Commandments are founded on these words of the
preface: “I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). The
inestimable privilege here exhibited is made the foundation of the
duty required. Jehovah, the Son of God, and the Messenger of the
covenant of grace, spoke those words to the members of His visible
church, the natural posterity of Abraham. He declares that He is
their God by virtue of this covenant made with Abraham: “I will
establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee,
to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee' (Genesis 17:7). He
also affirms that He is their God who has brought them out of the
land of Egypt, according to the promise He made to Abraham when,
in the most solemn manner, He renewed the covenant with him.
“Afterwards shall they come out with great substance” (Genesis
15:14). He first avouches Himself to be their God and Redeemer, and
then commands them to perform all their duties to Him. This was
the very form of His covenant with Abraham. “The Lord appeared to
Abram, and said unto him, ‘I am the Almighty God; walk before Me,
and be thou perfect’ ” (Genesis 17:1). It is as if He had said, “I am a
God all-sufficient for you, both to uphold and protect you, and to
provide all good things for you. Walk therefore before My face and be
perfect.” But the covenant made and renewed with Abraham, and
also with Isaac and Jacob, was the covenant of grace—a covenant to
be believed and embraced by faith. When the covenant made with
the Israelites at Sinai was afterwards renewed with them in the land
of Moab, we are told it was in order “that the Lord might be unto
them a God, as He had sworn to their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob” (Deuteronomy 29:12-13). The covenant of grace, then,
which had been made with Abraham was the very covenant that was
expressed in the preface to the Ten Commandments, and repeated
from Mount Sinai to the Israelites. Besides in the Sinai transaction,
Jehovah exhibited Himself to Israel not only as their God and
Redeemer, but as a God who promised to forgive iniquity (Exodus
34:7), to circumcise the heart to love Him (Deuteronomy 30:6), to
take them for His inheritance, to lead them, instruct them, and keep
them as the apple of His eye (Deuteronomy 32:9-10), and to dwell
and walk among them (Exodus 29:45-46; Leviticus 26:12). These
clearly are promises of the covenant of grace.
2. They with whom Jehovah covenanted at Sinai are called in
Scripture “the people of God,” upon whom He was to have mercy
(Hosea 2:23), a peculiar treasure to Him above all people (Exodus
19:5), His firstborn, precious in His sight and honorable (Exodus
4:22), and the seed of Abraham, to whom the promises were made
(Galatians 3:16). These descriptions of ancient Israel, given of them
as a people in covenant with God, refer evidently to the covenant of
grace.
3. God commanded that the two tables of stone on which He had
written the Ten Commandments a second time be laid in the ark.
Accordingly, after the first two tables—which had been hewn as well
as engraven by God Himself—had been broken beneath the mount,
the second tables, which were hewn by Moses, the typical mediator,
were deposited in the ark (Deuteronomy 10:3, 5). This represented
that after the divine law as a covenant of works had been broken, it
was to be fulfilled by Christ the true Mediator, and to be laid up as
fulfilled and honored in Him (Isaiah 42:21). Because the fulfilling of
the law written on those tables, by obedience and suffering, was the
proper condition of life in the covenant of grace made with the
second Adam, as the representative of His spiritual seed (Matthew
3:15), they are called “the tables of the covenant,” and the ark in
which they were deposited is called “the ark of the covenant”
(Hebrews 9:4). And because the law as a rule of life, in which
Jehovah testified His will to His people, was written on them, and
also because they were a testimony of His gracious covenant with
that people, they are called “the two tables of testimony” (Exodus
31:18), and the ark into which they were put is called “the ark of the
testimony” (Exodus 25:22).
Moreover, the tables of the law in the ark were covered and hidden
by the mercy seat or propitiatory cover. This prefigured that the
violated law should be so covered by the divine Surety, who was to
fulfill all the righteousness of it for believers, so as never to appear
again to condemn them (Romans 8:33-34). It was after the Lord had
renewed the covenant of grace with the believing Israelites that He
said to Moses, “Come up to Me into the mount, and be there; and I
will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I
have written, that thou mayest teach them” (Exodus 24:12). It was
after that, too, that He commanded Moses to make the ark and the
mercy seat in order not only to keep the tables safe, but to cover and
remove the form of the covenant of works which had been engraved
upon the commandments so that believers would no longer perceive
it. And it was also after that solemn transaction that Moses was
enjoined to lay up the tables in the ark and under the mercy seat.
This signified that as the ark with the mercy seat was an eminent
type of Christ, so the law is in Christ to believers, and in His hand is
issued forth as from the mercy seat to them, or from God as pacified
toward them. It is manifest, then, that the covenant of grace, with the
law annexed to it as a rule of life, was published from Mount Sinai.
4. The same also appears evident if we consider that the covenant
made with the Israelites at Sinai could not be the covenant of works.
God could not consistently, either with His own honor or with the
nature of the covenant of works, renew or make again that covenant
with persons who, by breaking it in the first Adam, had already
subjected themselves to the penalty of it. He could, indeed, display it
in its terror before condemned sinners, but could not again make it
with them. Neither could He renew it with the Israelites in particular
without disannulling the covenant of grace made with Abraham in
which He graciously promised to be a God to him, and to his seed
after him; for a future covenant of works made with the seed of
Abraham would annul the former covenant of grace made with him
as their representative. But this covenant was not, and could not be,
annulled by the transaction at Sinai; for the Apostle Paul says that
“the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law,
which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that
it should make the promise of none effect” (Galatians 3:17). Since the
covenant made with the Israelites at Sinai, then, did not and could
not so disannul the covenant of grace made with Abraham and his
seed, especially his believing seed after him, as to make the promise
of no effect, it could not be the covenant of works. It was, therefore,
the covenant of grace that was repeated and offered to his posterity
on that solemn occasion; and it was the law, standing in that gracious
covenant as the rule of their obedience, that was promulgated to
them,
5. That in the transaction at Sinai the covenant of grace was
published to the Israelites is also evident from this: that after Moses
had taken the book of the covenant and read it in the audience of the
people, he took half of the blood of the sacrifices, which had on that
solemn occasion been slain, and sprinkled it on the people and said,
“Behold, the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with
you, concerning all these words” (Exodus 24:8). An apostle informs
us that Moses, on that great occasion, sprinkled the book of the
covenant with the blood as well as all the people (Hebrews 9:19). It
would seem that he laid the book on the altar before he sprinkled the
altar with the other half of the blood. Now according to the same
apostle, it was the first Testament, or Old Testament dispensation of
the covenant of grace that was thus dedicated with the blood of the
sacrifices (Hebrews 9:18-20). It was therefore the covenant of grace,
according to the Jewish dispensation of it, that was delivered from
Mount Sinai. Moreover, the blood sprinkled by Moses typified the
blood of Christ; and the sprinkling of that, both on the altar and on
the people, was figurative of the sprinkling of this: both on the altar
of I lis divine nature for the satisfaction of justice, and on His people
for the justification of their persons and the sanctification of their
natures. But it was the New Testament dispensation of the covenant
of grace that I he blood of Christ confirmed, which is therefore called
“the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Hebrews 13:20), and it is
according to the covenant of grace, and that only, that the blood of
Jesus is sprinkled, either for pardon or for purification.
6. The promulgation of the ceremonial law formed a part of the
transaction at Sinai; and that law had no reference but to the
covenant of grace. When it was enacted to regulate the worship of the
Israelites, it was so framed as to prefigure the Messiah in His
obedience and suffering, and also the privileges and duties of
believers in every future age, according to the covenant of grace
(Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 10:1). The sacrifices enjoined by that law
did not make atonement for sin in any other point of view than as
types of the sacrifice of Christ. Hence the burnt sacrifice is said to
have been “an offering of a sweet savor,” or “for a savor of rest to the
Lord” (Leviticus 1:9). But it could not be a sacrifice of a grateful odor
to Him from any value or virtue in itself, but only from its being a
figure of the sacrifice of Christ with which, as an atonement for the
sins of His people, God is infinitely well pleased (Hebrews 9:9-14 and
10:4). The sacrifices which the Israelites were enjoined to offer had
indeed influence to remove typical or ceremonial guilt and prevent
temporal punishment; but they had not the smallest efficacy to
remove real or moral guilt from the conscience. But though they
themselves could procure only a figurative pardon, they served to
prefigure our great Redeemer who “by one offering hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). And it was only
when an Israelite presented his sacrifice in the faith of the great
atonement to be according to the covenant of grace, made by the
sacrifice of Christ, that he received a real and full remission of sin.
7. Last, circumcision and the Passover, the two sacraments of the
covenant of grace as formerly made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
were appended to the transaction at Sinai (John 7:22-23;
Deuteronomy 16: 1-8). They were added to it as seals of the covenant
of grace in order to confirm the interest and the faith of believers in
that covenant; and by a divine appointment they continued to be the
signs and seals of it during the whole period of the Jewish
dispensation. But the sacraments of the covenant of grace could not,
as sealing ordinances, be appended to any other covenant. The
covenant of grace, then, with the moral law standing in it as a rule of
life to believers, was promulgated from Mount Sinai to the Israelites,
and was, both in itself and in God’s intention, the principal part of
the transaction at Sinai.
It will be proper here to observe that, although believing and
unbelieving Israelites in the Sinai transaction were under the
covenant of grace, yet they could not both be under it in the same
respects. The believers among them were internally and really under
it, and under the moral law as a rule of life, as all true believers in
every age are (Romans 6:14; 1 Corinthians 9:21). But the unbelievers
were only externally, in respect of their visible church-state, under it
(Romans 9:4), and under the law as a rule of duty.
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Post by Admin on Feb 22, 2024 11:12:12 GMT -5
Section 2. The moral law in the form of a covenant of works
as displayed to the Israelites on Mount Sinai
The violated covenant of works, as I observed above, was not, and
could not be, made or renewed with the Israelites at Sinai; for it was
a broken covenant, and besides, it was a covenant between God and
man as friends, whereas now man has become the enemy of God. But
though it was not renewed with them, yet it was, on that solemn
occasion, repeated and displayed to them. It was not proposed to
them in order that they might consent, by their own works, to fulfil
the condition of it; but it was displayed before them in subservience
to the covenant of grace that they might see how impossible it was
for them as condemned sinners to perform that perfect obedience
which is the immutable condition of life in it. Although the Lord
knew well that they were far from being able to yield perfect
obedience, yet He saw proper to set forth eternal life to them upon
these terms (Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 27:26), and so to speak to
them in a strain adapted to their self-righteous temper. For previous
to the giving of the law to them at Sinai, they were so ignorant of the
perfection and vast extent of that holy law, as well as of their own
utter inability to perform the smallest acceptable obedience to it;
and, at the same time, they were so full of self-confidence as to say to
Moses, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). God
therefore displayed on Mount Sinai the law of the Ten
Commandments as a covenant of works in subservience to the
covenant of grace. He displayed it in that form in order that the
people might, by contemplating it, see what kind and degree of
righteousness it required as the condition of eternal life; and that by
means of it, finding themselves utterly destitute of perfect
righteousness, they might be impelled to take hold of the covenant of
grace in which the perfect righteousness of the second Adam is
provided and exhibited for the justification of all who believe.
That the law of the Ten Commandments as a covenant of works was
repeated and displayed on Mount Sinai in subservience to the
covenant of grace appears evident:
1. From the thunderings and lightnings, the noise of the trumpet and
the mountain smoking, the thick darkness and the voice of the living
God, speaking out of the midst of the fire on that awful occasion
(Exodus 20:18; Deuteronomy 5:22-26). These terrible emblems
signified the vindictive and tremendous wrath of God which is due to
all the race of Adam for their breach of the covenant of works, by
transgressing the law of that covenant (Galatians 3:10). They
represented also the extreme danger to which every sinner who
continues under the law in its covenant form is exposed as being
liable, every moment, to the eternal execution of its dreadful curse.
This awful display of the law as a covenant of works, though it was
not the principal part, yet it was the most conspicuous part of the
Sinaic transaction; for “the people saw the thunderings and the
lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain
smoking.” And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, “I
exceedingly fear and quake” (Hebrews 12:21). Now the covenant of
works was displayed in this tremendous form before the Israelites in
order that self-righteous and secure sinners among them might be
alarmed, and deterred from expecting justification in the sight of
God by the works of the law; and that, convinced of their sinfulness
and misery, they might be persuaded to flee speedily to the blessed
Mediator, and to trust in Him for righteousness and salvation. That
terrible display, accordingly, contributed in some measure to humble
them, to lessen that self-confidence which they had formerly
discovered, and to show them their need of the divine Redeemer, and
of union with Him by faith, in order to their being qualified for
performing acceptable obedience. This appears from their own
words to Moses after the dreadful sight which they beheld: “Speak
thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee, and we
will hear and do.” Standing afar off, they do not say, as they did
before the publication of the law at Sinai, “All that the Lord hath
spoken, we will do,” but “We will hear and do. We will first hear or
believe, and then do.” For speaking in this strain, the Lord
commended them thus: “They have well said all that they have
spoken. Oh, that there were such an heart in them” (Deuteronomy
5:27-29). Hearing applies to the words of the gospel as well as to
those of the law. They said well in that they made hearing or
believing the principle of acceptable obedience (Hebrews 11:6). The
law then, as it is the covenant of works, entered at Sinai “that the
offense might abound,” not in the life by the commission of it, but in
the conscience by conviction (Romans 5:20); it entered that it might
be their schoolmaster to bring them unto Christ, that they might be
justified by faith (Galatians 3:24).
2. That the law as a covenant of works was displayed on Mount
Sinai appears also from this: the Ten Commandments, written on
tables of stone, and so given to Moses on Sinai, are, by the Apostle
Paul, called “the ministration of death, written and engraven in
stones” (2 Corinthians 3:7). Now it is manifest that these
commandments are no otherwise the ministration of death than as
they are in the form of the covenant of works. In this form they were
delivered to Moses to be deposited in the ark in order to prefigure
the fulfilling of them by Messiah, “the Surety of a better covenant,”
and the concealing of that form, or the removal of it from them, to all
who should believe in Him.
3. The moral law, as it was delivered from Mount Sinai is in
Scripture expressly called a covenant. These are the two covenants:
the one from Mount Sinai (Galatians 4:24). The law, in that
promulgation of it, was such a covenant as had the appearance,
through misapprehension of its design, of disannulling the covenant
of grace made with Abraham. “The covenant,” says the Apostle Paul,
“that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four
hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make
the promise of none effect” (Galatians 3:17). The law included away
of obtaining a title to the heavenly inheritance, typified by that of
Canaan, so very different from that of the promise made to Abraham
as to be incompatible with it. “For if the inheritance be of the law, it
is no more of promise”; but God gave it to Abraham by promise
(Galatians 3:18). The covenant of the law from Mount Sinai, then,
was the covenant of works; which contains a method of obtaining the
inheritance inconsistent with that of the promise, but which cannot
disannul the promise or covenant of grace. Besides, Moses, speaking
of that law under the denomination of a covenant, affirms that it was
not made with the Patriarchs, or displayed publicly before them.
“The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb; the Lord
made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us” (Deuteronomy
5:2-3). This covenant displayed on Sinai, then, was not the covenant
of promise made with the fathers of the Israelite people.
4. The covenant of works is, in the New Testament, introduced and
illustrated from the law as given by Moses. Our blessed Lord, in
replying to one who asked Him what good thing he should do that he
might have eternal life, said, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the
commandments”; namely Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not
commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness, Honor thy father and thy mother.. .” (Matthew 19:17-19).
These being some of the commandments promulgated from Mount
Sinai, our Lord repeats them to him in the form of the covenant of
works. And the Apostle Paul, when mentioning the promise of the
covenant of works, says, “Moses describeth the righteousness which
is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by
them” (Romans 10:5). In expressing also the penal sanction of that
covenant, he says, “As many as are of the works of the law are under
the curse; for it is written (Deuteronomy 27:26), ‘Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the
law to do them' ” (Galatians 3:10). That a conditional promise
(Leviticus 18:5), then, and a dreadful curse (Deuteronomy 27:26) as
well as the Ten Commandments were published to the Israelites is
plain; and it is no less evident that, according to our apostle in the
passages cited above, they are the form of the covenant of works.
5. That the law in the form of a covenant of works was displayed on
Mount Sinai appears, likewise, from the opposition between the law
and grace often mentioned and inculcated in the New Testament. We
there read that, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth by
Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), and that, “The law is not of faith; but the
man that doeth them shall live in them” (Galatians 3:12). But it is in
its covenant form only that the law in Scripture is contrasted with grace.
6. In the Sinaitic transaction, the hewing of the latter tables of
stone by Moses, before God wrote the Ten Commandments on them,
might be intended to teach sinners that they must be convinced of
their sin and misery by the law as a covenant of works before it can
be written legibly on their hearts as a rule of life.
7. Last, the same also appears from these words of the Apostle Paul
cited above, “These are the two covenants; the one from the Mount
Sinai, which gendereth to bondage” (Galatians 4:24). The covenant
which genders to bondage is the covenant of works, made with Adam
as the head and representative of all its natural posterity, and
displayed on Mount Sinai to the Israelites. This covenant genders to
bondage for, according to the apostle, the children of it, or they who
are under it, are excluded from the heavenly inheritance, as Ishmael
was from Canaan the typical and earthly inheritance. “Cast out the
bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be
heir with the son of the free woman” (Galatians 4:30). The
generating of bondchildren, excluded from the heavenly inheritance,
is a distinguishing property of the covenant of works; and it cannot
be a property of the covenant of grace under any of its dispensations.
It is the covenant of works only that has a tendency to beget a servile
and slavish frame of spirit.
It is evident, then, that the covenant of works was displayed on
Mount Sinai. It was there displayed, together with the covenant of
grace, in order to subserve the latter, and particularly to represent to
the Israelitish church that the discharging of the principal and
penalty of the covenant of works was to be required of Messiah, the
Surety of elect sinners, as the proper condition of the covenant of grace.
Although the Sinaic transaction was a mixed dispensation, yet the
covenant of grace and the covenant of works were not blended
together in it. The latter, as well as the ceremonial law, was added to
the former, and was added to it in order that the Israelites might be
so convinced of their sinfulness and misery as to see their extreme
need of embracing the promise, or covenant of grace. God, says the
Apostle Paul, “gave it [the inheritance] to Abraham by promise.
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of
transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was
made” (Galatians 3:18-19). The promise made to Abraham and his
seed we have found in the preface to the Ten Commandments. To
this promise or covenant of grace, then, was the law or subservient
covenant of works added. It formed no part of the covenant of grace,
which had been a covenant entirely to the Patriarchs before that was
added to it at Sinai; and it is a covenant entirely to believers under
the gospel after that is removed from it. For our Apostle says, “It was
added till the seed should come.”
Accordingly, the Ten Commandments as promulgated from Mount
Sinai must be considered at least in a two-fold point of view, namely
as the law of Christ, or the law as a rule of life to believers, and as the
law as it is the matter of a covenant of works to unregenerate sinners.
This, I humbly apprehend, is intimated to us by their having been
twice written on tables of stone by God Himself (Exodus 32:16 and
34:1), and by the double accentuation of them in the sacred original.
In the Sinaic transaction, then, the promise or covenant of grace was
published to the Israelites, and the law or covenant of works also as
subservient to it. The former was and still is a covenant to be
believed or embraced by faith; the latter was a covenant to be done
or fulfilled. The Apostle Paul, accordingly, contrasts the one with the
other thus: “The law is not of faith; but the man that doeth them
shall live in them” (Galatians 3:12). The covenant to be embraced by
faith was given to the fathers of the Israelites as well as to
themselves; but concerning the covenant to be done Moses said to
them, “The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with
us” (Deuteronomy 5:3). And again, “The Lord spake unto you out of
the midst of the fire . . . and He declared unto you His covenant,
which He commanded you to perform, even Ten Commandments”
(Deuteronomy 4:12-13). Although the same covenant of works that
was made with Adam was displayed from Mount Sinai, yet it was for
a very different purpose. God’s design in making this covenant with
Adam was to have that righteousness which was due to Him from
man; but His great design in displaying it to Israel at Sinai was that
they, by contemplating it, might see what kind and degree of
righteousness it was by which they could be justified before God, and
that, finding themselves wholly destitute of that righteousness, they
might be excited to take hold of the covenant of grace in which a
perfect righteousness for justification is graciously provided.
QUESTION. The attentive reader might now ask, “Seeing the
covenant of grace, and also that of works, were both repeated from
Mount Sinai, were not the Israelites under both these covenants at
one and the same time?”
ANSWER. They could not be under both at the same time and in the
same respects. The believers among them, as I hinted above, were
internally and really under the covenant of grace, and only externally
under that terrible display of the covenant of works as it was
subservient to that of grace (Galatians 3:24); whereas the unbelievers
were externally, and by profession only, under that dispensation of
the covenant of grace (Romans 9:4), but were internally and really
under the covenant of works (Romans 4:14).
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Post by Admin on Feb 22, 2024 11:13:43 GMT -5
Section 3. The law promulgated from Mount Sinai to the
Israelites as the matter of a national covenant between God
and them
When we consider God as delivering to the Israelites at Mount Sinai
not only the moral law, but the ceremonial and judicial laws as
appendages to it, and as requiring them to perform obedience to
these as the condition of their happy entrance into Canaan, and
especially of their peaceful and continual residence in it as a nation;
we are to regard those laws, as the matter of a national covenant, or
covenant of peculiarity, between Jehovah and them. To consider
Jehovah, the Son of God, as the King or Sovereign of Israel as a
nation or political body is perfectly consistent with our viewing Him
likewise as their God and Redeemer. And to regard His law,
promulgated from Mount Sinai to them, as the rule of their
obedience considered as a nation is consistent enough with viewing
it, at the same time, as a covenant of works, and as a rule of duty to
believers in the covenant of grace.
In the Sinaitic transaction, then, the eternal Son of God is to be
considered as the Monarch or King of the Israelites (1 Samuel 12:12),
and they are to be viewed as a nation or political community under a
theocratic government. As their King, He enacted and proclaimed
laws, exacted tribute, disposed of offices in the state, made war and
peace, defended His people from their enemies, and punished with
death those of His subjects who refused allegiance to Him. He gave
the moral law to them as the primary rule of the obedience which He
required in this covenant (Deuteronomy ’1:13). He gave them also
the ceremonial and judicial laws as appendages to it; and these were
reducible to one or another of its precepts. The ceremonial
institutions which in the sacred history are frequently called
“statutes” were, for the most part, reducible to precepts of the first
table; and the judicial laws which, in the same history, are often
called “judgments” were mostly reducible to precepts of the second
table. Some of the judicial institutions, however, were appendages to
precepts of the first table.
Now, as the moral law required Israel to perform obedience both to
the ceremonial and the judicial precepts, so, while the ceremonial
institutions were to regulate them in their ecclesiastical capacity, the
judicial precepts were to direct them in their civil capacity as a nation
under the immediate government of God as their King. The laws,
then, which Jehovah prescribed to the Israelites, by which He was to
govern them as His subjects, were chiefly the judicial laws. And
seeing these are all reducible to precepts of the moral law, they
required internal as well as external obedience—the obedience of the
heart as well as of the life. They directed and bound every Israelite in
the inward man as much as in the outward. The sum of the duty
required in the moral law is love. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might”
(Deuteronomy 6:5). “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself1
(Leviticus 19:18). These words of Moses to Israel are remarkable:
“Know, therefore, that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him, and
keep His commandments, to a thousand generations; and repayeth
them that hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be
slack to him that hateth Him, He will repay him to his face'
(Deuteronomy 7:9-10). One of the precepts of the second table of the
moral law to which the judicial precepts were reducible is: “Thou
shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17). Seeing God was a Spirit under the
old as well as He is under the new dispensation, He, as the king of
Israel, required more from them than mere external obedience to His
commands. Loyalty even to a mere earthly prince comprises inward
respect as well as outward adherence to him and his laws.
The conditions, then, of that national covenant which God made with
the Israelites at Sinai were the obedience both of the heart and of the
life to all His commands, and, more immediately, to those of His
judicial law. “And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently
unto My commandments, which I command you this day, to love the
Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart, and with all
your soul; that I will give you the rain of your land in His due season'
(Deuteronomy 11:13-14).
The promises of that national covenant were promises of temporal
good things to the Israelites, both as a body politic and as
individuals, and of these in subservience to their enjoyment of
religious privileges. The inheritance of the earthly Canaan as typical
of the eternal inheritance was given to Abraham by promise, by an
absolute promise. “For if the inheritance be of the law,” says the
apostle, “it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by
promise” (Galatians 3:18).
God promised freely the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed as
an inheritance; and therefore the promise of it was not a conditional
promise, but an absolute promise. Accordingly it is called “the land
of promise” (Hebrews 11:8-9). The typical inheritance of Canaan,
then, was not of the law; that is, it was not given to Abraham and his
seed on condition of their obedience, as if that had founded their title
to it; but it was given to them by an absolute promise. In the Sinai
transaction, Jehovah promised to Israel as a nation, in reference to
Canaan, that they should easily subdue the nations of Canaan; that
their land should abound with milk and honey, corn and wine, and
everything else conducive to their external prosperity; that under the
divine protection they should enjoy a long and peaceable possession
of that country; that God would multiply them as the sands of the sea
and as the stars of heaven; that He would render them valiant in
battle and victorious over their enemies; that He would save them
from famine, pestilence, and the other plagues which He had
inflicted on the Egyptians; and that He would favor them with the
symbols of His peculiar presence. These were the leading promises of
the Sinaitic covenant considered as a national covenant; and they
were all exhibited to the Israelites in a conditional form. This will
appear evident if the following passages are considered: Exodus
23:22-31; Leviticus 26:3-13; Deuteronomy 7:12-24, 11:13-17, and
28:1-13. But conditions are of two sorts: antecedent or consequent—
antecedent, when the condition is the cause of the thing promised, or
is that which gives a contractual title to it; consequent, when the
condition is annexed to the promise as an adjunct to the thing
promised, or as a qualification in the party to whom the promise is
made (see John Ball on The Covenant of Grace).
Now in the latter sense, the obedience of the Israelites to the
precepts, especially of their judicial law, was a condition of those
promises. It was not a cause why the good things promised were
bestowed on them, but it was a qualification in them, or an adjuct,
that was required to attend the blessings promised and freely
conferred. Accordingly, Moses said to Israel, “The Lord hath
avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath
promised thee, and that thou shouldst keep all His commandments”
(Deuteronomy 26:18). Had the good things promised to the Israelites
been suspended on their obedience as the cause of them, or that
which was to give a contractual title to them, such promises would
have been inconsistent with the absolute promise given them in
Abraham, their illustrious progenitor. As the Israelites, even in their
civil capacity, were a typical people, and their obedience a typical
obedience, so their obedience was to be so connected with their
temporal privileges as to resemble the obedience of God’s spiritual
Israel in its connection with their spiritual privileges under the
gospel.
True believers among the children of Israel were the only persons
who performed sincere obedience to the law of that covenant. The
unbelievers yielded only an external and hypocritical obedience, and
that merely to the letter of the law. So long, however, as they
continued to yield even an external obedience, the promises of
temporal good things were fulfilled to them; for the Lord “loved them
for the fathers’ sakes” (Romans 11:28). And therefore He favored
them with many external benefits. He also conferred favors on them
for the sakes of those among them who were the objects of His
everlasting love (Isaiah 6:13; 2 Corinthians 4:15). And so great was
His love of true holiness that He rewarded that external obedience
which was only the shadow of it, with those external benefits which
were shadows of good things to come.
The penal sanctions of that national covenant were, for the most
part, temporal punishments. These were denounced to the Israelites
not only as a nation, but as individuals. The punishments which the
Lord threatened against the violations of that covenant by Israel as a
community were chiefly these: famine, pestilence, and various other
diseases, want of success in war, a smiting of their land with
barrenness, a casting of them out of that promised land, and a
dispersing of them among the heathen (Deuteronomy 4:25-28; 11:17;
28:15-68; and 29:22-28), The punishments which He threatened to
inflict on the individual who would disobey the law of that covenant
were such as these: that He “would set His face against that man, and
cut him off from among His people,” and that He “would blot him
out of His book,” or out of the register of the living (Leviticus 17:10;
20:2-6 and 23:29-30; Exodus 32:33).
Thus the law of God was promulgated from Mount Sinai in its
threefold character: as a rule of life to believers, as a covenant of
works, and as the matter of a national covenant between God and the
Israelites.
What has been advanced in this, and the two preceding sections, may
assist in guiding us to the meaning of what the apostle says in
Hebrews 8:6-10, concerning the old and new covenants. The design
in this epistle to the Hebrew Christians was to show them the
preference of the new dispensation of the covenant of grace, which
has taken place since the death of Christ, to that old dispensation of
it, which had been established at Sinai, and had continued until His
death. This the writer illustrates not by stating the difference
between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, but by
showing the difference between the old dispensation, or former
manner of administration, of the covenant of grace and the new
dispensation of the same covenant. The former of these
dispensations he calls the “first or old testament,” and the latter “the
new.” The covenant of grace, according to the old dispensation of it,
was published from Mount Sinai, and, at the same time, the law was
given to the Israelites as the substance of a national or political
covenant between God and them.
Now the apostle, in stating the difference between the old and new
dispensations of the covenant of grace, affirms that the new
dispensation or testament is better than the old, and that the
promises of the new are better than those of the old. They are
comparatively better than the spiritual promises of the old
dispensation or testament since in them the grace of God is held
forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy to all nations
(Westminster Confession of Faith VII :6) than in those of the old;
and they are absolutely better than the temporal promises of that
national covenant which the Lord made with Israel as a political
body. Since the land of Canaan had been given to the posterity of
Abraham by promise, or as an inheritance, the apostle might, with
strict propriety, call even the national covenant that had been made
with that people a testament, and might show the preference of the
new testament to it as well as to the old testament, or old
dispensation of the covenant of grace. He seems in Hebrews 8:9
especially to have stated the contrast between the new testament and
that national covenant. From the 6th verse to the end of the chapter,
the original word which we render “covenant” the Geneva translators
render “testament”; which seems to me more suitable to the apostle’s
argument, as well as to the analogy of faith, than to translate it
“covenant.” For one and the same covenant of grace was made with
believers at Sinai, and is made with believers now, though under
different dispensations, each of which is called a testament. That
gracious covenant as published to Israel from Mount Sinai, was a
testament; for it consisted of absolute grants and promises. Hence
our apostle expressly calls it a testament, and “the first testament”
(Hebrews 9:18-20). The promises of it were turned into a testament,
for the spiritual blessings promised were, as they now are, gifts of
sovereign grace.
From what has been said, we may learn also the meaning of these
words above cited: “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth
by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). The law which was given from Mount
Sinai by the ministry of Moses, considered as the matter of the
covenant of works, was a ministry of rigor and of terror in opposition
to the gospel dispensation, which is called “grace”; it was a
ministration of condemnation and of death. Considered as a rule of
duty in the covenant of grace, and in the hand of Moses the typical
mediator, it was a ministration of shadows as opposed to truth. The
gospel, or New Testament dispensation of the covenant of grace, is
called “grace and truth.” It is grace, for it is a clear and efficacious
exhibition of the covenant of grace to sinners of mankind. It is truth,
as opposed not only to falsehood, but to shadows. While Jesus Christ
has brought to His Church the clearest discoveries of redeeming
grace, He Himself is the substance of all the Jewish types, and the
accomplishment of all their predictions and promises. Moses was the
minister of the law; Christ is the Author of grace and truth. All the
promises and blessings of salvation flow from His grace, and are
performed by His truth.
Must all the obedience required in the law as a rule of life be
performed to the Lord as our God and Redeemer? Then, in order to
perform spiritual and acceptable obedience to the Ten
Commandments, a man must trust in the Lord Jesus for all his
salvation, and trust that God in Christ is His redeeming God, or that
Christ is his Redeemer, and God in Christ is his covenant God. No
obedience to those commands is acceptable but that which flows in
the channel of the covenant of grace, and is performed to God in
Christ as our covenant God. The only way to yield evangelical and
spiritual obedience is, first, to accept cordially the offer of Christ to
trust that God in Christ is our God, and then to attempt universal
obedience to Him as such. We cannot otherwise fear this glorious
and fearful name, “The Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 28:58). We are
not to do in order to believe, but to believe in order to do. We are to
trust in Christ and in the promise in order to be strengthened for
obedience to the precept; for acceptable obedience can never be
performed but in the strength of our almighty Redeemer. “Without
faith” in Him as the principle of obedience, “it is impossible to please
God” (Hebrews 11:6).
To serve the Lord by keeping diligently His holy commandments is a
most reasonable service. Instead of requiring obedience from us by
His mere will, without assigning any other reason, He condescends
to enforce His commands by the most engaging and endearing
motives. He exhibits Himself to us as JEHOVAH, the infinite,
eternal, and unchangeable One who has His being of Himself, and
from whom all being is derived; who is supereminent in every
adorable perfection, and at the same time is our Creator, Preserver,
and Governor. Our obedience, therefore, is not only due to Him, but
is infinitely reasonable. Besides, He makes a grant of Himself to us as
our God, our God in covenant; related to us by an everlasting
covenant, which is exhibited in the gospel to us so that we may so
take hold of it as to take possession of Him as our God and portion.
He also presents Himself to us as our redeeming God who, in the
person of the Son, redeems us from all our iniquity; who delivers us
from our spiritual thraldom, and purifies us to Himself a peculiar
people zealous of good works (Titus 2:14). How delightful to reflect
that He incites us to obedience not merely by His sovereignty over
us, but by the attracting consideration that He is our God, our
redeeming God who has obtained eternal redemption for us! When
the believer considers what the great Redeemer is to him, and what
He has done and is doing for him, should not his heart overflow with
adoring gratitude, and should not he express his gratitude by a
voluntary and cheerful obedience to all His commands? Can
anything be more reasonable?
The children of fallen Adam are so bent upon working for life that
they will on no account cease from it till the Holy Spirit so convinces
them of their sin and misery as to show them that Mount Sinai is
wholly on fire around them, and that they cannot with safety remain
a moment longer within the limits of it. Strange indeed it is that
sinners, already condemned by the law of works, should,
nevertheless imagine a probability, yea, a certainty of obtaining
eternal life by their own works according to that very law. The
depraved sons of Adam think, like Samson, to rouse themselves and
walk, as in former times, as if their strength were yet in them; and
multitudes never perceive that is gone till after they have been seized
in virtue of that violated law and bound with chains of eternal
darkness. And, oh, what addition to the anguish of damned souls will
it be to reflect that they dreamed of attaining life by a law which, to a
sinner, is and cannot but be a “ministration of death”; and that by
supposing in themselves an ability still to answer the demands of the
law they have rendered it so much the more able to condemn them!
One reason, therefore, why the Lord displayed the law as a covenant
of works on Sinai was that self-righteous Israelites, and all pharisaic
professors to the end of time might see that as they have sinned, and
so have not performed perfect obedience, it is absolutely impossible
for them to attain justification and eternal life on the footing of their
own works (Romans 3:20). The law was there displayed in its
covenant form in order to discover sin and condemn for it; and so to
stir up secure sinners to inquire after the perfect fulfilment of it by
the second Adam (Deuteronomy 27:26), for until self-righteousness
is overthrown, a man will never submit to the righteousness of Jesus
Christ.
We may hence learn the great difference between performing duties
in the way of the covenant of works and in that of the covenant of
grace. According to the first covenant, sinners perform duties in
order that these may entitle them to life; but, according to the
second, saints perform them because they already have a tide to life.
According to the former, unregenerate men do them in their own
strength; but, according to the latter, regenerate persons perform
them in the strength of grace derived from the second Adam. The
motives of obedience, under the covenant of works, are the slavish
fear of hell and the servile hope of heaven; whereas the motives of
duty in the covenant of grace are love and gratitude to God not only
as the Creator and Preserver of His people, but as the God and
Redeemer of His people (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)
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