Dying to Law and living to God.
Here is a history of man's experience with Law. At first the vision of Law crushes and terrifies. Then it works deliverance from the life that is wholly given up to it. This deliverance is not for antinomian licence, but for spiritual life in God.
I. WHAT IS IT TO DIE TO LAW? Law here is not merely the Mosaic code. It is generic. Every nation has more or less some conception of law. We all feel it in our conscience. To live for this, to toil simply to meet its requirements, to be gloomy and despondent at our failure, is to live to Law. This by no means implies perfect or even partial obedience to Law. It may go with absolute failure; it is never found resulting in the complete harmony of Law and conduct. Sow, to die to Law is to be free from this galling yoke. It is to be liberated from the frightful vision of an obligation that is imperative and yet beyond our powers—the nightmare feeling that we must do what we cannot do. It is freedom, too, from the habit of living in regard to Law as the rule and motive of life.
II. HOW DOES LAW LEAD TO THIS RESULT? We can understand how the gospel does it by offering forgiveness and by calling us to a better method of holiness. But Law also strangles the life that dwells in it.
1. It condemns our failure, and so shows us that it is vain to attempt to live in it.
2. It proves itself impotent to give us the means of fulfilling its requirements. The longer we live in it the more do we see that such a life is fruitless. Thus we gradually cease to feel drawn to it. At length we confess our failure and abandon the attempt. The Law has then killed the life we had in it.
III. WHAT IS THE OBJECT OF THIS DEATH TO LAW? Regarded by itself it is a miserable disaster. Law points to righteousness. To cease to live in Law is to dismiss the discredited guide in the wilderness and to be left alone. By itself the result would be ruinous. But it is only permitted in order to clear the way for something better. We must not rest in freedom from Law. To be free from the obligation and free from the penalty, and to have no new and better life, would be the collapse and degradation of all moral order. That is a false and fatal gospel which consists only in the promise of such a result. The only reason for allowing it is to secure the new life in God.
1. This means exchanging a blind submission to Law or a loving obedience to our Father in heaven.
2. It means abandoning the helpless command for the inspiration of a living presence. This is the true Christian life. It is therefore no selfish salvation that is offered to us, but a life of self-dedication, a losing of self in God. Note that the Law does not lead to this result, nor does dying to the Law. Thus far only the way is prepared. The new life in God flows from the gospel of Christ.—W.F.A.