Christians are in the habit of looking at “the law” as a great enemy. Why?

Because it does not countenance the least sin. It says, “walk before me and be thou perfect.”

Is that not right – could a perfect God recognize or make a law in any way imperfect? 

Surely not. The reason men count the law their enemy is that all have sinned, and ever since the disobedience of Adam they have been in the condition known as “sinful flesh.” Prior to sin’s entrance, the law was Adam’s friend, and justified him; but the condition of death obtained after “sin had entered,” and man in this fallen condition of death finds it utterly impossible to so live and act in harmony with his maker, that God’s perfect law would not condemn him. And since all are sinners, of course none but a defective law could recognize such persons as perfect. The law of God has condemned all, and everyone who has reasoning faculties seems to recognize that he is not perfect.

God has always had a law; even before the giving of it in full form to mankind at Mt. Sinai. (Exod 20.) And since He always has been perfect, His laws always have been perfect and condemned and opposed even the slightest sin. Abel, Noah, Abraham and all the patriarchs recognized the fact that they were sinners when they made altars and sacrificed thereon, before attempting to hold communion. Thus, they acknowledged themselves sinners and unable of themselves to approach God. How different from the way Adam and God walked and talked in the Garden! No sacrifices or offerings for sin were there needed, for Adam was justified by God’s law. Thus, we see that what the patriarchs knew of God’s law condemned them.

The giving of the full law from Sinai did not take away man’s sin. No, it only showed it the more fully.

Did the keeping of it ever justify any of them?

No; “By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His (God’s) sight.”

Was the fault in the law, or in the people? 

“The law is holy,” and God’s commandments holy and just and good.” (Rom 7:12.) Since, then, the law did not justify them, it must have condemned them, even as it had condemned the patriarchs. Not any more really (for there is only one penalty – death) but more loudly. They were no more sinners than the patriarchs and others who had not had the full law given them, but they were shown their condition as sinners more clearly.

Why?

That they might see their own fallen and imperfect condition and learn the exceeding sinfulness of SIN. (Verse 13)

We have seen that God always has had a perfect law which condemned every sin in every being, and how it was shown in different degrees to the patriarchs and Israel, yet that the effect was the same – condemnation – only more fully realized by those who saw the law most clearly.

Now, how about the great heathen world?

Surely a righteous law could not say: The heathen is RIGHTEOUS; unless they live in harmony with God. And if you thought they were living in harmony with God you would not send missionaries to them. No. Then they, too, are condemned by God’s law. And as Paul says: “These that have not the law” (the full written law as given to Israel) “show the work of the law written in their hearts,” a spark of that principle if justice and knowledge of right and wrong which must have been an important part of the natural organization of the first perfect man, Adam; a spark merely, not quite extinguished by the degrading effects of sin.

And what did this spark of conscience do for them?

It sometimes justified, and sometimes condemned. But if their spark of conscience condemned them only ONCE during their lifetime, it showed that they were imperfect.

Now, “all unrighteousness is sin,” and “sin is the transgression of the law,” and “the wages of sin is death.” So, we see that the only voice of the law of God to any who hear it, is: You cannot live. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Therefore must “every mouth be stopped and all the world become guilty before God.” (Rom 3:9.)

There lay the whole human family dead and dying through sin, the law hanging up before them, they admit, is grand, “just” and “holy.” They were told that “The man that doeth these things shall live.” (Rom 10:5. Gal 3:12.) But O, they could not do them. Some tried hard, as Paul describes, Rom 7:14-24. When with their minds they resolved to “do those things and live,” they found sin in their members hindering and preventing. When the striving ones found they could not deliver themselves from death, they exclaimed: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Diaglott) or, from the sin and death which has gotten possession of my body. When he so cries out, he has reached the place God wanted to bring him to, i.e., to realize that he can NEVER deliver himself from death and sin. But someone asks:

If he dies does not the act of dying fill all the requirements of the law, and could he not, after thus dying, be raised up by God?

No, you err in supposing that the act of dying is the penalty. Man has been dying ever since sin entered the world, but the penalty will not be entirely inflicted until all are dead.

We continue with our next post.