But in what sense are we freed from the law, if we are still to keep
the law? The New Testament takes hold of the law of God as revealed in
the Old, and makes it infinitely higher in its requirements.
Some men say that their Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount.
It is the most hopeless Gospel a sinner ever struggled with.
For in this sermon our Lord pours the spiritual meanings into the
law of God. It may have been possible for a man to abstain from the
outward act of murder, but our Lord takes that command and shows that
the inward fact of murder is in a man’s heart if he is angry with his
brother. So does the Master lift the command against impurity into
a place where the strong moral man, who does not have the secret of
victory, is convicted of impurity.
Not only is there this spiritual interpretation of the law, which makes
it the more impossible to keep it, but there is the new commandment the
Lord gave his disciples, to love one another _as he loved them_. And
as though this were not enough, the New Testament epistles, after the
death and resurrection, when the dispensation of law was fully over,
show us that to break the law of God at one point makes us guilty of
all: “Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have
respect of persons, ye commit sin, being convicted by the law as
transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble
in one point, he is become guilty of all. For he that said, Do not
commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit
adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law”
(James 2:8-11).
This startling passage says that if Christians have respect of
persons――and has not the Spirit here put his finger upon one of
the most pathetic and abominable sins of Christian churches of our
day?――these Christians are convicted as transgressors of the law, and
are guilty of all. Then the Apostle goes on to speak of the sins of
murder and adultery as samples of the kind of thing that a Christian is
guilty of when he shows respect of persons,――the awful sin of unlove.