The Blessing and Curse of the Law

“Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.”—Psalm cxix. 18.

The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel which were read yesterday, and have been read again to-day, connect the old world with the new; the obedience of the Jew with the obedience of the Christian. The obedience of Jesus to the Law is the link between them. We are taught that we have an interest in Circumcision, because He submitted to it; we are taught that Circumcision, in its highest sense, belongs to the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, the children of the New Dispensation. The subject in all its aspects, historical and personal, is of the deepest importance. It is not one which a preacher should pass by, under pretence that the services of the Church treat it far more satisfactorily than he can. We may carry away from these services a vague impression that there is some likeness and some difference between our position and that of the Jew. We may ascertain what the likeness is, and so rise to a full perception of the difference. We may content ourselves with phrases about a formal and literal obedience and a moral obedience. We may learn why one is better than the other; how we may exchange one for the other. I know no meditation more suitable for a new year, which should always combine memories with hopes, repentance for the past with manly and humble resolutions for the future.

I have chosen a passage from the hundred and nineteenth Psalm, which expresses the feelings of a true Israelite respecting the law of his fathers—the Law under which he was born. It is one out of a great number all referring to the same topic,—all exhibiting the same character. Sometimes the Law, the Commandments, the Statutes of the Lord may seem as if they occupied the whole thought of the writer; but Understanding, Knowledge, Sight—these words recur just as often,—recur always in relation to the others. “Give me understanding, that I may keep thy Law. Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy Law.” You perceive how little indication is here of a dry, formal, mechanical submission to a mere rule. It appears to be assumed that the law cannot be observed unless there is a faculty which enters into its meaning. It appears as if the great reward of obedience to the law were not something external or accidental, but the capacity of discovering the mind of the Lawgiver.

1. Now whence did the Jew derive this apprehension? Was he not placed under a rigid, unbending rule, which proceeded, he was told, from a divine authority, which it was death to transgress? Could such a law as this be an exercise for the understanding? Must it not simply have awakened in him an intense terror, lest he should consciously or unconsciously break any of its precepts; lest he should incur any of the fearful penalties which it threatened? Have not we reason to know that this was actually the effect of the Law upon one who reverenced it beyond any of his countrymen,—who as touching the righteousness of it was blameless? Does not St. Paul tell us that it lay upon him as a heavy, intolerable curse? Did he not receive Christ expressly as the deliverer from that curse? And is it not clear that he used this language not of the ceremonial law, but of the moral? For does he not dwell especially upon the words, “Thou shalt not covet,” as frightening him,—nay, as awakening in him the very sin which they denounced? Surely he never delighted in the law, as David says that he did; surely he never can have prayed that his eyes might be opened to see wondrous things out of it: for what would have been disclosed to him but the blackness of darkness and death?

2. It might appear at first a very strange answer to these inquiries to say, David learned this secret about the Law from the Covenant of Circumcision. For St. Paul was circumcised the eighth day, and St. Paul’s great fight after his conversion was with those who boasted of their circumcision. And yet I believe you will find that to be the true answer; one which, if we look fully into the meaning of it, will explain the facts which seem so puzzling and contradictory, will reconcile the experience of David with the experience of St. Paul.

“God Himself—the unseen God,” so spoke that rite which the children of Abraham had received from their ancestor, “has chosen you to be His people. There are tendencies in you which are earthly, sensual, idolatrous. He has not chosen these, He has chosen you, that He may separate you from these; that He may overcome them in you; that He may give you your true and proper rights as men; that He may save you from sinking into animals yourselves; that He may save you from worshipping animals, or anything—even the most vast and glorious things which you see with your eyes; that He may teach you to worship Him.”

3. Here was the foundation of the Israelite’s life—a Revelation of the righteous God; a sign and pledge that the righteous God cared for his fathers and him; a sign that the great proof of His care would be the redemption of them from low, grovelling habits, from the tyranny of the senses, and from all the inclinations which bow down to the senses and serve them. Here was that Covenant of God, which so long preceded the Law that was written on tables,—a Covenant that was altogether living and personal, made by a personal guide and friend with the man himself and with his seed after him; associating itself with the life of the family, with all household sympathies; denouncing those tempers and habits which would sever brother from brother, children from their fathers. This was the Covenant which all violations of the tie of brotherhood, all rebellions of children against parents, helped to interpret; seeing that they manifestly proceeded from forgetfulness of it. Brothers thought they could keep the peace with each other, though they did not remember who had made them brothers; children thought the mere instinct of affection would keep them attached to their father, though they did not remember who had created the relationship, who had bestowed the affection. It did not prove so. The instinct of self-indulgence, or of getting good things for themselves, was too strong for their sympathies. It was shown that there could be no family union in any true sense of the word, if there were not a God to uphold it.

4. Such were the lessons of patriarchal history, such lessons were brought home to each Jew, who was willing to receive them, by his own personal experience. Supposing he had taken them home to his heart, supposing he had become deeply convinced that the living God, just because he watched over the nation, and desired the well-being of each of its members, was making him aware of those evils which were fatal to true fellowship, fatal to his own manliness and blessedness, was promising to uphold him against these evils and overcome them; suppose the Israelite thoroughly believed that the greatest misery which could befall him was to lose hold of this gracious, loving God, and to become the servant of false gods,—what would he think of the Law? I do not know that he would be careful to distinguish one part of it from another. Such distinctions would reveal themselves to him by degrees. He would believe that all of it—what is called the local or ceremonial part, as well as the more universal and permanent—indicated the vigilance and wisdom of a Being who was devising the means, which He knew to be fittest, for preserving His people from the dangers by which they were beset, especially from their own downward propensities. He would see clearly that these propensities,—the idolatrous propensities first of all, carelessness about the name of the unseen God, the forgetfulness of His distinction of work and rest, the neglect of parents, the indifference to life, the breach of the marriage vow, violation of the neighbour’s landmark, the false witness against his character, coveting his possessions,—were leading individuals and nations down to death. Therefore to be warned of these, to be told of their issues, amidst thunders and lightnings, to have the warnings laid up for all generations in fixed letters, on tables of stone, in the Tabernacle which was the witness of God’s perpetual presence among them, was a new proof that no restiveness, coldness, distrust, rebellion on the part of His creatures had alienated Him from them; that His punishments, like His gifts, were all designed to break their stubbornness and to work out their reformation. And so the lesson, which is the lesson of the whole Bible,—of the Old Testament as much as the New, that Faith is the only foundation of obedience, that it is impossible truly to obey a Being whose character you do not entirely trust——to whom you attribute caprice, any inclination that is arbitrary and not righteous became rooted in their inmost convictions, gathering strength from their own evil deeds, from the evil deeds of their countrymen, from the evil deeds of the heathen, all alike being the fruits of suspicion of the Being who, in one way or another, had been revealing His goodness to them all. And what will follow from such a conviction, and from the exercise of the trust which it pronounced to be so reasonable an exercise,—to be the exercise which God asks of men,—but a desire to know more and more of the purpose and significance of His Law, to see more and more how truly it was the Law upon which He had constituted human society, to see more and more how it expressed His own nature? “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold these wondrous things out of Thy Law.”

5. But now suppose a Jew entirely to lose sight of this great meaning of Circumcision—of this great witness which it bore against and for himself,—suppose him to look upon it merely as a sign of the Separation between him and the other people of the earth, of the hatred which God bore to them, of the partiality which He felt out of pure arbitrariness for a certain race; under what aspect would the Law come forth to him? First of all, he would glorify himself upon it as much as upon the Covenant. It was part of the national inheritance. “Poor miserable Gentiles! God has not chosen that they should know anything of it! They must perish for the want of it.” “Indeed! and what then is to become of thee, child of the Covenant?—of thee, who hast this Law, who boastest of it? It says, Thou shalt not covet. Dost not thou covet? Dost thou covet less, for knowing that the sin is forbidden? Dost not thou covet more? And is the Law then not true? Does it not mean what it says? Does it denounce others, and excuse thee? Oh, think of the trumpet that sounded loud and long when it was proclaimed; of the burning mountain; of the lightning and thunder! Were they not all directed against thee? Will not they find thee out?”

6. Such was the aspect of the Law to Saul of Tarsus, the Hebrew of the Hebrews,—the man who thought that the Covenant and the Law were devised against the Gentiles. So was it shown to him that he had that in him which every Gentile had—a nature that would not be subject to the Law of God, that hated it. But so, also,—more wonderful discovery still—it was shown him that he had that within him which delighted in the Law of God, which acknowledged that it was altogether good, which desired to obey it. The question was, Does God identify me with that which is evil, or with that which is good; with that which fights against Him, or with that which cries out for Him? Or does He not recognize the difference at all? Does He only seek to damn me for the evil I do, not to save that in me which cries out against the evil; which would pray—if it knew how to pray, to whom it should pray—for deliverance from it?

7. “I thank my God,” he exclaims, “through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Accepting Him as the revealer of God’s will and purpose to men, as the manifestation of God, as the daysman between God and man, I do verily know that God does not desire to damn me for the evil to which I have yielded and am yielding, though He will damn that evil for ever and ever; that He is seeking to save me—this spirit, this inner man, which protests against it—out of its dominion. I thank God through Jesus Christ, who has perfectly fulfilled the Law, not in the spirit of a slave, but of a child; who has submitted to all its requisitions, because He knew that they were contrived for the benefit and elevation of men; who bore its punishments, that we might bear them. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord, because He, as the Head and Redeemer of our race, claims us as sons of God, and bestows on us the Spirit of sonship, which is His own Spirit.

8. Here then, in the first place, was the reconciliation of St. Paul with David. He had learnt, as David had learnt, that distinction between the flesh and the spirit, of which Circumcision was the sign. He had learnt to regard God’s Covenant as an assurance of help to the spirit against the flesh. He had learnt, as David had learnt, that God is a Deliverer out of bondage, as the first commandment declared that He was. And so, when Saul’s conscience most reproached him with sin, the Law confirmed the verdict, and he was shut up apparently in a hopeless prison. He had learnt to invoke the Lawgiver; to tell Him all that he had done and all that he was; to ask for a clean heart and a right spirit; that he might be true in his inward parts, and might know wisdom secretly. So far he was recovering his Jewish standing-ground; he was changing the lore of the rabbis for the lore of kings and prophets; he was perceiving that there were wondrous things hid in the Law, which only God could open his eyes to behold.

9. But he could not attain this position without attaining a lower and a higher one. He could not acquire the dialect of the kings and prophets till he had confessed a Crucified Man as the King and the Prophet; till he had owned Him as the Lord of his own spirit, the Lord of his nation, the Lord over men. He must continue to regard the Law as his enemy, and the God of Abraham as His enemy;—while persecuting on behalf of Judaism, he must renounce the Jewish faith,—unless he could believe that One had come into the world who delighted to do the will of God, who had His Law within His heart, who was content to offer His soul and body that God’s Law might be written also in the hearts of men, that God’s will might be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Was it a great humiliation for the righteous Paul to make this confession? In making it he took up a position higher than that of David and the prophets. He claimed to be himself, not a servant, but a son; his power to delight in the Law came from this, that he could dare to call the Author of it his Father; that he could receive it, with all its thunders and lightnings, as the message from a Father who is determined that the enemies of His children shall be put down and exterminated.

10. In this process of discovery, therefore, the discovery of a new covenant is involved,—a covenant with sons; but yet a covenant containing a pledge of all the same war with evil, of all the same wrath against it, of all the same separation from it, as the covenant with servants. But for whom was the Covenant designed? Who might dare to call themselves by the audacious name, Sons of God? Stripped bare of all his individual, all his national pretensions, forced to regard the Law as directed against his sin, the Covenant as a separation between him and his evil nature, there was nothing left for St. Paul but to become an apostle of the Gentiles. He must preach the Covenant of Sonship to all, without exception. The Son of God, having taken the flesh of man, having died the death of man, must be declared to be the Head of every man. It must be the right and duty of every man to confess himself a member of Christ; it must be the right and duty of every man to thank God, through Jesus Christ, for having adopted him into His family, for having promised to take him under His government and to give him the true circumcision of the spirit. There could be no limit to St. Paul’s gospel, unless he denied the facts of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. There could be no danger in asserting men to be Sons of God, unless the further message was suppressed, that He who claimed them as sons and accepted them as pure and righteous in the only-begotten Son, took them under His education and gave them His Spirit, to make them aware of their parentage and to destroy whatever in them was inconsistent with it. That is the Baptismal Covenant; so it interprets our existence to us; so it interprets the condition of mankind.

11. This doctrine, in its length and breadth, the Church has been teaching us in the last week, and will continue to teach us during the present. The Circumcision comes between Christmas Day and the Epiphany. The ground is laid in the revelation of the Divine Word, of the only-begotten Son, in our flesh. There we have the true regenerate constitution of humanity; announced by angels, made known to shepherds in the manger of Bethlehem. Then follows the witness borne by the old dispensation, not against universality, but for distinction; the witness that man is a spiritual being; that the constitution of man is a spiritual constitution; that what is base, selfish, separating in man, will not submit to it and must perish. So we arrive—by the Jewish road, which is straighter and nearer than all bye-roads—at the full manifestation of the Redeemer and King to all the Nations; at the prayer—in which David’s prayer, “Open mine eyes, that I may see wondrous things,” reaches its highest point—“That we, which know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of Thy glorious Godhead,”

12. I have no intention of entering this afternoon on the subject of the festival which suggested that prayer. The Circumcision is quite enough for one day. I hope you will have seen, that the Apostle who teaches us that we “are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,” was not trifling with words, or merely using a Jewish analogy, which was suitable for his time, not for ours. He was giving the very sense of the old institution, as it presented itself to the seers of his land, as it affected all their history; he was giving the result of a long, humbling, elevating experience of his own. And he was teaching us exactly what we have needed in every past year, what we shall need in this. The flesh that resists Law, human and divine, that will not be subject to it, is in all of us. You may coerce it by punishments; you may make law and government—man’s or God’s very terrible and very much hated. But you will not produce obedience—free and fruitful obedience—in a man, or a child, or a nation, unless you confess that there is something besides this flesh; a spirit which craves for law, craves for government, but which craves still more for a righteous Lawgiver and Governor. Do justice to yourself—do justice to every fellow-creature—by appealing to this which is the true man, the man after God’s heart. Tell it of One who has claimed fellowship with it, has redeemed it, has vindicated for it the right to say, “Abba, Father.” Say that the Eternal God sees it, sees all human beings, in this Redeemer, in this Son; say that He wishes to renew all in His image. Then, when we believe this, we shall not complain that law is burdensome. Divine Law we shall hail as a direct means, human as a subordinate means, for the education of the spirit—for the crushing of that which hinders its expansion and its freedom. “Circumcise our hearts and our members,” we shall pray, “in such way as Thou, the All-seeing, deemest best for bringing us to the true obedience. Open Thou our eyes, that we may behold in every one of Thy laws, for men or for nature, Thy wondrous wisdom and love.”