There is nothing more important for the Christian to understand than the distinction between law and grace. For to understand that is to have in one’s heart the Gospel message. It is not too much to say that the chief cause of powerlessness in the Christian church to-day, a powerlessness that is made the more acutely evident by the world’s sore travail, is that so many thousands of Christians are still living under law.
They have not found the emancipation of grace.
They do not walk at liberty, which was purchased for us by Christ.
They do not stand fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set us free.
They are not “free indeed” with the freedom which the Son of God won for us.
This is not an academic question. It is not a discussion of points of law, nor the making of fine distinctions in the deeper spiritual mysteries. It is a question of sin.
When our Lord was telling the Jews that if they believed him and followed him they would know the truth, and the truth would set them free, they threw back their shoulders in their pride of ancestry and boasted that they were Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. The Son of God did not stop to discuss questions of race, or of political liberty, but went to the heart of the matter with one of his tremendous verilies: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” (John 8:34).
Christians Who Are Bondslaves
That Word of the King of kings is the word that needs to be thundered to-day, or, what is more effective, whispered to-day into the souls of men. There is no bondslavery comparable to this. A man may be on the side of righteousness so far as the conflict of nations is concerned to-day, but what avails that for the solving of his individual problem if he is the bondservant of sin?
If, then, the question of law and grace is a question of sin, it is the most vital matter that can concern men to-day. Always alongside of sin is another word beginning with S—“Salvation,”—that is, this word is always alongside of sin in this age of Grace. When our Lord told the Jews of this bondslavery, he did not leave them there, but added that wondrous word: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”