It is of the utmost importance to understand the true character and object of the moral law, as set forth in this chapter. There is a tendency in the mind to confound the principles of law and grace, so that neither the one nor the other can be rightly understood. Law is shorn of its stern and unbending majesty, and grace is robbed of all its divine attractions. God's holy claims remain unanswered, and the sinner's deep and manifold necessities remain unreached, by the anomalous system framed by those who attempt to mingle law and grace. In point of fact, they can never be made to coalesce, for they are as distinct as any two things can be. Law sets forth what man ought to be, grace exhibits what God is. How can these ever be wrought up into one system? How can the sinner ever be saved by a system made up of half law, half grace? Impossible. It must be either the one or the other.
The law has sometimes been termed "the transcript of the mind of God." This definition is entirely defective. Were we to term it a transcript of the mind of God as to what man ought to be, we should be nearer the truth. If I am to regard the ten commandments as the transcript of the mind of God, then, I ask, is there nothing in the mind of God save "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not"? Is there no grace? no mercy? no loving-kindness? Is God not to manifest what He is? Is He not to tell out the deep secrets of that love which dwells in His bosom? Is there naught in the divine character but stern requirement and prohibition? Were this so, we should have to say, God is law, instead of "God is love." But, blessed be His name, there is more in His heart than could ever be wrapped up in the "ten words" uttered on the fiery mount. If I want to see what God is, I must look at Christ; "for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." (Col. ii. 9.) "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." (John i. 17.) Assuredly there was a measure of truth in the law; it contained the truth as to what man ought to be. Like everything else emanating from God, it was perfect so far as it went--perfect for the object for which it was administered; but that object was not, by any means, to unfold, in the view of guilty sinners, the nature and character of God. There was no grace, no mercy. "He that despised Moses' law died without mercy." (Heb. x. 28.) "The man that doeth these things shall live by them." (Lev. xviii. 5; Rom. x. 5.) "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." (Deut. xxvii. 26; Gal. iii. 10.) This was not grace. Indeed, Mount Sinai was not the place to look for any such thing. There Jehovah revealed Himself in awful majesty, amid blackness, darkness, tempest, thunderings, and lightnings. These were not the attendant circumstances of an economy of grace and mercy; but they were well suited to one of truth and righteousness, and the law was that and nothing else.
In the law, God sets forth what a man ought to be, and pronounces a curse upon him if he _is_ not that. But then a man finds, when he looks at himself in the light of the law, that he actually is the very thing which the law condemns. How then is he to get life by it? It proposes life and righteousness as the ends to be attained by keeping it; but it proves, at the very outset, that we are in a state of death and unrighteousness. We want the very things at the beginning which the law proposed to be gained at the end. How, therefore, are we to gain them? In order to _do_ what the law requires, I must have life; and in order to _be_ what the law requires, I must have righteousness; and if I have not both the one and the other, I am "cursed." But the fact is, I have neither. What am I to do? This is the question. Let those who "desire to be teachers of the law" furnish an answer. Let them furnish a satisfactory reply to an upright conscience, bowed down under the double sense of the spirituality and inflexibility of the law and its own hopeless carnality.