outlines and suggestive comments.
The slave fears the penalty; the child the commandment.—Bridges.
In many things we offend all, but we are not all despisers of the Word of God. Good men have reason to lament their manifold breaches of the commandment, and yet they have a sincere love and esteem for it.—Lawson.
Whatever comes with Divine authority is a Divine commandment. The Gospel is on this as well as other accounts called the “law of faith,” being the Divine prescription for the salvation of sinners.—Wardlaw.
This word has a private and personal, as well as a public application; but it is in the providential government of the nations that its truth has been most conspicuously displayed. The kingdoms of this world in these days prosper or pine in proportion as they honour or despise God’s Word. . . . Number the nations over one by one, and see where property is valuable and life secure; mark the places where you would like to invest your means and educate your family; you will shun some of the sunniest climes on earth, as if they lie under a polar night, because the light of truth has been taken from their sky. Traverse the world in search of merely human good, seeking but an earthly home, and your tent, like Abraham’s, will certainly be pitched at “the place of the altar.”—Arnot.
The more we despise the law, the more we are bound by it. “But he that fears.” This is a splendid picture of the Christian. He is not one that keeps the law, but “fears” it, i.e., tries to keep it, fears it with a godly fear, and as a climax, frequent in a second clause (see chap. [xiv. 11] and passim), he is not one who comes simply less under bonds, but is forgiven altogether.—Miller.
The word of Divine revelation is here, as it were, personified as a real superhuman power, whose service one cannot escape, and in default of this he comes into bondage to it, i.e., loses his liberty.—Lange’s Commentary.
main homiletics of verse 14.
Living by Rule.
I. The wise man lives by rule or according to law. “The law of the wise.” Wherever there is any force or power there must be rule, or there will be destruction from the power and possibly destruction to the power. The power that sets in motion the locomotive must be governed by law, or it will destroy the driver and that to which it was intended to give motion. Under the guidance of law it will minister to man’s convenience, left to itself it will injure him and put an end to itself. Power is lodged within the hand of every human being which may be used to bless himself and others, but in order that it may do so it must act in accordance with some law, it must have some rule for its guidance. Nothing on earth is so powerful for good or for evil as a human soul, because its power is exercised in the domain of spirit, but without rule it cannot exercise its power for the good of others, and will even destroy all its capabilities of working good to itself. Where men live without a rule of life there is power without law, and this must work evil and not good. It is the characteristic of a morally wise man that all his powers of mind and soul are under control, he has them well in hand.