The law is a written document. It has an antagonistic aspect to us all,
Gentiles as well as Jews. Christ has blotted it out. More than that, He
has taken it out of the way, as if it were an obstacle lying right in
the middle of our path. More than that, it is "nailed to the cross."
That phrase has been explained by an alleged custom of repealing laws
and cancelling bonds by driving a nail into them, and fixing them up in
public, but proof of the practice is said to be wanting. The thought
seems to be deeper than that. This antagonistic "law" is conceived of as
being, like "the world," crucified in the crucifixion of our Lord. The
nails which fastened Him to the cross fastened it, and in His death it
was done to death. We are free from it, "that being dead in which we
were held."
We have first, then, to consider the "handwriting," or, as some would
render the word, "the bond." Of course, by _law_ here is primarily meant
the Mosaic ceremonial law, which was being pressed upon the Colossians.
It is so completely antiquated for us, that we have difficulty in
realising what a fight for life and death raged round the question of
its observance by the primitive Church. It is always harder to change
customs than creeds, and religious observances live on, as every maypole
on a village green tells us, long after the beliefs which animated them
are forgotten. So there was a strong body among the early believers to
whom it was flat blasphemy to speak of allowing the Gentile Christian to
come into the Church, except through the old doorway of circumcision,
and to whom the outward ceremonial of Judaism was the only visible
religion. That is the point directly at issue between Paul and these
teachers.
But the modern distinction between moral and ceremonial law had no
existence in Paul's mind, any more than it has in the Old Testament,
where precepts of the highest morality and regulations of the merest
ceremonial are interstratified in a way most surprising to us moderns.
To him the law was a homogeneous whole, however diverse its commands,
because it was all the revelation of the will of God for the guidance of
man. It is the law as a whole, in all its aspects and parts, that is
here spoken of, whether as enjoining morality, or external observances,
or as an accuser fastening guilt on the conscience, or as a stern
prophet of retribution and punishment.
Further, we must give a still wider extension to the thought. The
principles laid down are true not only in regard to "_the_ law," but
about all law, whether it be written on the tables of stone, or on "the
fleshy tables of the heart" or conscience, or in the systems of ethics,
or in the customs of society. Law, as such, howsoever enacted and
whatever the bases of its rule, is dealt with by Christianity in
precisely the same way as the venerable and God-given code of the Old
Testament. When we recognise that fact, these discussions in Paul's
Epistles flash up into startling vitality and interest. It has long
since been settled that Jewish ritual is nothing to us. But it ever
remains a burning question for each of us, What Christianity does for us
in relation to the solemn law of duty under which we are all placed, and
which we have all broken?
The antagonism of law is the next point presented by these words. Twice,
to add to the emphasis, Paul tells us that the law is against us. It
stands opposite us fronting us and frowning at us, and barring our
road. Is "law" then become our "enemy because it tells us the truth?"
Surely this conception of law is a strange contrast to and descent from
the rapturous delight of psalmists and prophets in the "law of the
Lord." Surely God's greatest gift to man is the knowledge of His will,
and law is beneficent, a light and a guide to men, and even its strokes
are merciful. Paul believed all that too. But nevertheless the
antagonism is very real. As with God, so with law, if we be against Him,
He cannot but be against us. We may make Him our dearest friend or our
foe. "They rebelled ... therefore He was turned to be their enemy and
fought against them." The revelation of duty to which we are not
inclined is ever unwelcome. Law is against us, because it comes like a
taskmaster, bidding us do, but neither putting the inclination into our
hearts, nor the power into our hands. And law is against us, because the
revelation of unfulfilled duty is the accusation of the defaulter and a
revelation to him of his guilt. And law is against us, because it comes
with threatenings and foretastes of penalty and pain. Thus as standard,
accuser and avenger, it is--sad perversion of its nature and function
though such an attitude be--against us.
We all know that. Strange and tragic it is, but alas! it is true, that
God's law presents itself before us as an enemy. Each of us has seen
that apparition, severe in beauty, like the sword-bearing angel that
Balaam saw "standing in the way" between the vineyards, blocking our
path when we wanted to "go frowardly in the way of our heart." Each of
us knows what it is to see our sentence in the stern face. The law of
the Lord should be to us "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb," but the
corruption of the best is the worst, and we can make it poison. Obeyed,
it is as the chariot of fire to bear us heavenward. Disobeyed, it is an
iron car that goes crashing on its way, crushing all who set themselves
against it. To know what we ought to be and to love and try to be it, is
blessedness, but to know it and to refuse to be it, is misery. In
herself she "wears the Godhead's most benignant grace," but if we turn
against her, Law, the "daughter of the voice of God," gathers frowns
upon her face and her beauty becomes stern and threatening.
But the great principle here asserted is--the destruction of law in the
cross of Christ. The cross ends the law's power of _punishment_. Paul
believed that the burden and penalty of sin had been laid on Jesus
Christ and borne by Him on His cross. In deep, mysterious, but most real
identification of Himself with the whole race of man, He not only
Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses, by the might of
His sympathy and the reality of His manhood, but "the Lord made to meet
upon Him the iniquity of us all"; and He, the Lamb of God, willingly
accepted the load, and bare away our sins by bearing their penalty.
To philosophise on that teaching of Scripture is not my business here.
It is my business to assert it. We can never penetrate to a full
understanding of the rationale of Christ's bearing the world's sins, but
that has nothing to do with the earnestness of our belief in the fact.
Enough for us that in His person He willingly made experience of all the
bitterness of sin: that when He agonised in the dark on the cross, and
when from out of the darkness came that awful cry, so strangely compact
of wistful confidence and utter isolation, "My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?" it was something deeper than physical pain or
shrinking from physical death that found utterance--even the sin-laden
consciousness of Him who in that awful hour gathered into His own breast
the spear-points of a world's punishment. The cross of Christ is the
endurance of the penalty of sin, and therefore is the unloosing of the
grip of the law upon us, in so far as threatening and punishment are
concerned. It is not enough that we should only intellectually recognise
that as a principle--it is the very heart of the gospel, the very life
of our souls. Trusting ourselves to that great sacrifice, the dread of
punishment will fade from our hearts, and the thunder-clouds melt out of
the sky, and the sense of guilt will not be a sting, but an occasion for
lowly thankfulness, and the law will have to draw the bolts of her
prison-house and let our captive souls go free.
Christ's cross is the end of law as _ceremonial_. The whole elaborate
ritual of the Jew had sacrifice for its vital centre, and the prediction
of the Great Sacrifice for its highest purpose. Without the admission of
these principles, Paul's position is unintelligible, for he holds, as in
this context, that Christ's coming puts the whole system out of date,
because it fulfils it all. When the fruit has set, there is no more need
for petals; or, as the Apostle himself puts it, "when that which is
perfect is come, that which is in part is done away." We have the
reality, and do not need the shadow. There is but one temple for the
Christian soul--the "temple of His body." Local sanctity is at an end,
for it was never more than an external picture of that spiritual fact
which is realised in the Incarnation. Christ is the dwelling-place of
Deity, the meeting-place of God and man, the place of sacrifice; and,
builded on Him, we in Him become a spiritual house. There are none other
temples than these. Christ is the great priest, and in His presence all
human priesthood loses its consecration, for it could offer only
external sacrifice, and secure a local approach to a "worldly
sanctuary." He is the real Aaron, and we in Him become a royal
priesthood. There are none other priests than these. Christ is the true
sacrifice. His death is the real propitiation for sin, and we in Him
become thank-offerings, moved by His mercies to present ourselves living
sacrifices. There are none other offerings than these. So the law as a
code of ceremonial worship is done to death in the cross, and, like the
temple veil, is torn in two from the top to the bottom.
Christ's cross is the end of law as _moral_ rule. Nothing in Paul's
writings warrants the restriction to the ceremonial law of the strong
assertion in the text, and its many parallels. Of course, such words do
not mean that Christian men are freed from the obligations of morality,
but they do mean that we are not bound to do the "things contained in
the law" because they are there. Duty is duty now because we see the
pattern of conduct and character in Christ. Conscience is not our
standard, nor is the Old Testament conception of the perfect ideal of
manhood. We have neither to read law in the fleshy tables of the heart,
nor in the tables graven by God's own finger, nor in men's parchments
and prescriptions. Our law is the perfect life and death of Christ, who
is at once the ideal of humanity and the reality of Deity.
The weakness of all law is that it merely commands, but has no power to
get its commandments obeyed. Like a discrowned king, it posts its
proclamations, but has no army at its back to execute them. But Christ
puts His own power within us, and His love in our hearts; and so we pass
from under the dominion of an external commandment into the liberty of
an inward spirit. He is to His followers both "law and impulse." He
gives not the "law of a carnal commandment, but the power of an endless
life." The long schism between inclination and duty is at an end, in so
far as we are under the influence of Christ's cross. The great promise
is fulfilled, "I will put My law into their minds and write it in their
hearts"; and so, glad obedience with the whole power of the new life,
for the sake of the love of the dear Lord who has bought us by His
death, supersedes the constrained submission to outward precept. A
higher morality ought to characterise the partakers of the life of
Christ, who have His example for their code, and His love for their
motive. The tender voice that says, "If ye love Me, keep My
commandments," wins us to purer and more self-sacrificing goodness than
the stern accents that can only say, "Thou shalt--or else!" can ever
enforce. He came "not to destroy, but to fulfil." The fulfilment was
destruction in order to reconstruction in higher form. Law died with
Christ on the cross in order that it might rise and reign with Him in
our inmost hearts.