There is one precious word that lies at the very threshold of the gate of liberty, and paves the whole of the Christian pathway thenceforward to the gates of glory—it is the word GRACE.
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). It is, therefore, certain that there is no liberty under law.
In Galatians 4:22-31 and Galatians 5:1 The great principles of LAW and GRACE are set before us—principles as distinct as bondage is distinct from liberty; for bondage is linked with one, and liberty with the other. These verses plainly show that you cannot stand before God on both these grounds at one time; one or the other must be relinquished. You must either take your stand entirely upon your own merits under law, or entirely upon the merits of Another under grace. “The son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” The law will not bend to your weakness nor atone for your wickedness. You must meet its full demands, or bear without abatement, its withering curse. How, then, could the law give liberty? Nay, it “gendereth to bondage”; its yoke is “the yoke of bondage.”
There is an important difference between the way this subject is presented to us in the Roman, and in the Galatian epistles. The man whose exercises are described in Romans 7 is groaning under the bitter bondage of the law. He has never known liberty, is an entire stranger to it. Nay, you could hardly furnish a picture of more abject, utter slavery than is presented here. He longs to do what he has no power to perform; he hates the thing he is constantly doing.
With the Galatians the case was different. They had, through grace, been given to taste something of the sweetness of gospel liberty. They had “received the Spirit” of liberty. They had been brought into the relationship to which liberty rightly belongs—the relationship of sons. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be FREE INDEED” (John 8:36).
But, alas! after knowing the freedom of grace, these Galatians were foolishly turning back to the fetters of the law. Hence the apostle's withering censure, “Who hath bewitched you?” and his earnest charge, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).
It cannot be too well remembered that in order to be “under law” it is not necessary to make a formal repetition of the Ten Commandments once a week, or make public confession that this is your code of practice. Every person who judges of his acceptance before God by what he finds in his own state of soul is practically under law.
Let us consider this more closely. The law told man what he ought to be for God. So that the moment I say, God cannot accept me because I am not what I ought to be, I am practically on the ground of law. On such ground I cannot but be wretched. Nay the more sincere I am, the keener will be my anguish, for the greater will be my disappointment. I expected to make myself good enough for God to accept me, and have only got worse and worse.
But while the law told me what I ought to be for God, and that I come short of the glory of God, even at my very best, grace tells me what God has been for me at my very worst. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). How this comes out in righteous boldness in the epistle to the Romans! The very person who, in the light of God's presence, says, “There is no good thing in me,” that is in my flesh; can say with equal certainty, “There is no condemnation for me, in Christ” (Rom. 8:1). More than this, God is causing the worst things in our earthly path to work together for our heavenly good. So that the believer can say, ' Though no good thing do I deserve, yet no good thing will He withhold. If He gives me to see no good here, I can with confidence turn my heart away and say, It is all good there. God has found everything in Christ, and everything I want I have in Christ also.'
It makes all the difference whether I judge of what God will be to me by what I have been for Him, or judge what He will be for me according to the revelation He has made of Himself in Christ. Turn to the book of Judges for a beautiful illustration of this.
We are told (Judg. 13:8-23) that the angel of the Lord, whose name was “Wonderful,” came down from heaven to bring to Manoah and his wife a communication from God.
When the sacrifice was offered, and the flame of the altar was carrying up the sweet savor of that burnt-offering and meat-offering to God, we read that the angel “ascended” with it.
Have we not in this little event the picture of another and infinitely greater one? Is it not a picture of the blessed mission and work of the Lord Jesus Christ? He came down to the earth to make a communication from God to man. And when His gracious mission was fulfilled, and His sin-atoning work finished, He went up again to heaven—went up in all the sweet savor of that precious sacrifice. He could say, Father, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” What next? Why, the Holy Ghost then comes down from that glorified One, and brings us word that not only has God accepted the work of Christ, but that He now accepts every believer according to all the sweet savor of that sacrifice as HE estimates it. Oh, what grace is this!
But to return to our figure. Manoah exclaims to his wife when all was over, “We shall surely die... we have seen God.” Not so, responds his wife. “If the Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not have received a burnt-offering and a meat-offering at our hands, neither would He have showed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these.” Notice how very differently they reason. He reasons from themselves to God-upward; she from God to themselves-downward. Just as the law said, “Thou shalt love”; while He by whom grace came said, “God so loved.” One tells what man should be; the other what God is, and that in the face of all that man has been. It was as though Manoah's wife had said, ' There are two good reasons why we shall not be cut off in judgment. First, if God kill us, He must do violence to His own acceptance of the sacrifice at our hands. Secondly, in such an event, what is to become of His own promise that we shall have a son? To accept the sacrifice is God's side of the matter. He has done it, and given full proof of it. To accept His Word is ours. And shall we not do it, gladly do it, dismissing at once our dishonoring doubts and fears? This surely is our wisdom, for it honors God.
So with us. We can say, God has accepted the spotless Sacrifice. He has glorified the once forsaken Substitute, and it is ours to accept God's testimony concerning Him. If the Sacrifice satisfies God, His testimony to that effect shall satisfy us. This is how faith reasons. This is her solid resting-place.