For in this sermon our Lord pours the spiritual meanings into the law of God. It may have been possible for a man to abstain from the outward act of murder, but our Lord takes that command and shows that the inward fact of murder is in a man’s heart if he is angry with his brother. So does the Master lift the command against impurity into a place where the strong moral man, who does not have the secret of victory, is convicted of impurity.
Not only is there this spiritual interpretation of the law, which makes it the more impossible to keep it, but there is the new commandment the Lord gave his disciples, to love one another as he loved them. And as though this were not enough, the New Testament epistles, after the death and resurrection, when the dispensation of law was fully over, show us that to break the law of God at one point makes us guilty of all: “Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:8-11).
This startling passage says that if Christians have respect of persons—and has not the Spirit here put his finger upon one of the most pathetic and abominable sins of Christian churches of our day?—these Christians are convicted as transgressors of the law, and are guilty of all. Then the Apostle goes on to speak of the sins of murder and adultery as samples of the kind of thing that a Christian is guilty of when he shows respect of persons,—the awful sin of unlove.
Law Never Abrogated
This leads us into the truth that the law of God is pure and holy and spiritual, and has never been abrogated. The New Covenant does not take away the law: it provides a way of fulfilling the law. There are many senses in which the word “law” is used in the Scriptures, but we are looking now at the righteous law of God which must be fulfilled, and the breaking of which is sin, for sin is lawlessness, or the breaking of the law. James tells us that to stumble in one point is to break the whole law, for the law is a unity.
The law is a unity because it is an expression of the character of God, and God is one.
To break it in one point is to sin against God. It is a true revelation of the Scriptures that “God is law,” though these words do not occur. The words “God is love” do occur, and love is the fulfilling of the law.
When God gave the perfect law to men God knew that men could not keep it apart from the secret of Grace. But men did not know it. And God cannot do anything for a man by grace until man learns that he is a transgressor of the law of God, and that it is impossible for him to keep it. Israel said, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” They indeed needed a tutor unto Christ.
The law, then, was added to show man what sin is, to make sin exceeding sinful, to prove to man that he is a sinner. This work the law did all through the old dispensation. But this work the law must continue to do for every individual before he can enter into the meaning of grace.