Mat. 5:22, 28—the angry word is murder; the sinful look is adultery. Mark 12:30, 31—“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; 2 Cor. 10:5—“bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”; Eph. 5:1—“Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children”; 1 Pet. 1:16—“Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” As the brightest electric light, seen through a smoked glass against the sun, appears like a black spot, so the brightest unregenerate character is dark, when compared with the holiness of God. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 235, remarks on Gal. 6:4—“let each man prove his own work, and then shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not of his neighbor”—“I have a small candle and I compare it with my brother's taper and come away rejoicing. Why not compare it with the sun? Then I shall lose my pride and uncharitableness.” The distance to the sun from the top of an ant-hill and from the top of Mount Everest is nearly the same. The African princess praised for her beauty had no way to verify the compliments paid her but by looking in the glassy surface of the pool. But the trader came and sold her a mirror. Then she was so shocked at her own ugliness that she broke the mirror in pieces. So we look into the mirror of God's law, compare ourselves with the Christ who is reflected there, and hate the mirror which reveals us to ourselves (James 1:23, 24).
(c) Solidarity.—It exhibits in all its parts the nature of the one Lawgiver, and it expresses, in its least command, the one requirement of harmony with him.
Mat. 5:48—“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”; Mark 12:29, 30—“The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God”; James 2:10—“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all”; 4:12—“One only is the lawgiver and judge.” Even little rattlesnakes are snakes. One link broken in the chain, and the bucket falls into the well. The least sin separates us from God. The least sin renders us guilty of the whole law, because it shows us to lack the love which is required in all the commandments. Those who send us to the Sermon on the Mount for salvation send us to a tribunal that damns us. The Sermon on the Mount is but a republication of the law given on Sinai, but now in more spiritual and penetrating form. Thunders and lightnings proceed from the N. T., as from the O. T., mount. The Sermon on the Mount is only the introductory lecture of Jesus' theological course, as John 14-17 is the closing lecture. In it is announced the law, which prepares the way for the gospel. Those who would degrade doctrine by exalting precept will find that they have left men without the motive or the power to keep the precept. Æschylus, Agamemnon: “For there's no bulwark in man's wealth to him Who, through a surfeit, kicks—into the dim And disappearing—Right's great altar.”
Only to the first man, then, was the law proposed as a method of salvation. With the first sin, all hope of obtaining the divine favor by perfect obedience is lost. To sinners the law remains as a means of discovering and developing sin in its true nature, and of compelling a recourse to the mercy provided in Jesus Christ.
2 Chron. 34:19—“And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes”; Job 42:5, 6—“I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee; Wherefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.” The revelation of God in Is. 6:3, 5—“Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts”—causes the prophet to cry like the leper: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” Rom. 3:20—“by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the [pg 544]knowledge of sin”; 5:20—“the law came in besides, that the trespass might abound”; 7:7, 8—“I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead”; Gal. 3:24—“So that the law is become our tutor,” or attendant-slave, “to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith”—the law trains our wayward boyhood and leads it to Christ the Master, as in old times the slave accompanied children to school. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 177, 178—“The law increases sin by increasing the knowledge of sin and by increasing the activity of sin. The law does not add to the inherent energy of the sinful principle which pervades human nature, but it does cause this principle to reveal itself more energetically in sinful act.” The law inspires fear, but it leads to love. The Rabbins said that, if Israel repented but for one day, the Messiah would appear.
No man ever yet drew a straight line or a perfect curve; yet he would be a poor architect who contented himself with anything less. Since men never come up to their ideals, he who aims to live only an average moral life will inevitably fall below the average. The law, then, leads to Christ. He who is the ideal is also the way to attain the ideal. He who is himself the Word and the Law embodied, is also the Spirit of life that makes obedience possible to us (John 14:6—“I am the way, and the truth, and the life”; Rom. 8:2—“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death”). Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh: “The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver, Unless he had given the Life too with the Law.” Christ for us upon the Cross, and Christ in us by his Spirit, is the only deliverance from the curse of the law; Gal 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.” We must see the claims of the law satisfied and the law itself written on our hearts. We are “reconciled to God through the death of his Son,” but we are also “saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10).
Robert Browning, in The Ring and the Book, represents Caponsacchi as comparing himself at his best with the new ideal of “perfect as Father in heaven is perfect” suggested by Pompilia's purity, and as breaking out into the cry: “O great, just, good God! Miserable me!” In the Interpreter's House of Pilgrim's Progress, Law only stirred up the dust in the foul room,—the Gospel had to sprinkle water on the floor before it could be cleansed. E. G. Robinson: “It is necessary to smoke a man out, before you can bring a higher motive to bear upon him.” Barnabas said that Christ was the answer to the riddle of the law. Rom. 10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.” The railroad track opposite Detroit on the St. Clair River runs to the edge of the dock and seems intended to plunge the train into the abyss. But when the ferry boat comes up, rails are seen upon its deck, and the boat is the end of the track, to carry passengers over to Detroit. So the law, which by itself would bring only destruction, finds its end in Christ who ensures our passage to the celestial city.
Law, then, with its picture of spotless innocence, simply reminds man of the heights from which he has fallen. “It is a mirror which reveals derangement, but does not create or remove it.” With its demand of absolute perfection, up to the measure of man's original endowments and possibilities, it drives us, in despair of ourselves, to Christ as our only righteousness and our only Savior (Rom. 8:3, 4—“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”; Phil. 3:8, 9—“that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith”). Thus law must prepare the way for grace, and John the Baptist must precede Christ.
When Sarah Bernhardt was solicited to add an eleventh commandment, she declined upon the ground there were already ten too many. It was an expression of pagan contempt of law. In heathendom, sin and insensibility to sin increased together. In Judaism and Christianity, on the contrary, there has been a growing sense of sin's guilt and condemnableness. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Sept. 23, 1893:600—“Among the Jews there was a far profounder sense of sin than in any other ancient nation. The law written on men's hearts evoked a lower consciousness of sin, and there are prayers on the Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which may almost stand beside the 51st Psalm. But, on the whole, the deep sense of sin was the product of the revealed law.” See Fairbairn, Revelation of Law and Scripture; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 187-242; Hovey, God with Us, 187-210; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:45-50; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 53-71; Martineau, Types, 2:120-125.
2. Positive Enactment, or the expression of the will of God in published ordinances. This is also two-fold: