The Law and the Gospel

Yet a sinner look at himself in the glass of God’s holiness, he must see his own condemnation; but by faith in Jesus he beholds himself free from condemnation, and stands before God in Christ as Christ Himself.

The Law was magnified by Christ, and made honourable; and therefore God in His righteousness must magnify for ever Christ and His members with Him.

Under the Law they laboured first, and rested after (Exod. 20:8-11)1; but under the Gospel we rest first, by faith in Jesus, and then work. The Law begins with commands and ends with blessings; but the blessings are fruit upon lofty branches, which fallen man can never reach: he cannot and will not climb the tree. The Gospel, on the contrary, begins with promises; and promises give birth to precepts. The Law demands justice; the Gospel delights in mercy through satisfied justice. Moses blesses the law-doer; Jesus pardons the guilty and saves the lost.

Every one who hears the Gospel has a door opened to him of escape from the wrath to come. In the Day of Judgment men shall know all the past. Forgetful hearers of the Gospel shall then with gnashing of teeth remember how they once neglected so great salvation (Heb. 2:3)2: their worm will never die, their fire never be quenched. (Mark 9:44.)3

No child of Adam has a right to anything from God save the wages of sin. Justice, apart from grace in Christ’s cross, must allot to every sinner hell for his wages and portion. If the sinner is to have eternal life, he must have it as a free gift from God. Alas that thousands of sinners who hear the Gospel will not have it, because they are too proud to be saved on God’s terms of pure grace!

What is it to obey the Gospel, but to believe the Gospel? Unbelief says, “I will not receive Christ as a gift from God.” Faith, on the contrary, says, “I want Christ in His fulness; my pinching poverty makes me glad of so rich and all-sufficient a Saviour.”

Fußnoten

  1. Exodus 20: 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.↩︎

  2. Hebrews 2: 3 How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;↩︎

  3. Mark 9: 44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.↩︎