Romans chapter 8 verses 3 & 4.
The subject we have billed as God's law
in the God-honoring life.
Let me read then.
For what the law could not do in
that it was weak through the flesh, God
sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in
the flesh.
That the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit.
Now we are living in an age when
law, order and discipline are certainly at a
great discount.
One doesn't need to pause even momentarily to
prove that.
I think we would all concede the truthfulness
of the statement without any further ado.
The spirit of the age is is against
every concept of an objective law that is
inflexible, that has absolute authority over anyone.
The fashion of the age is in the
directly opposite direction from that.
Not only that, because of this probably we
find in our day and age that quite
a number of professing Christians have tended to
stress even certain Christian doctrines in such a
manner that they dishonor the law of God.
I suppose this is one of the most
subtle dangers for a young Christian.
And we've all been there at one time
even if we are not there just now.
Sometimes we attempted, attempted to believe what is
not biblical.
Then there are other times when we can
lay hold of a biblical doctrine and so
blow it up out of all proportion that
the truth becomes untrue.
The very doctrine that is based upon the
Word of God eclipses some other doctrine, some
other teaching, which in the pattern of God's
Word needs to be seen alongside the one
that has become so central in our thinking.
All the doctrines of Scripture are like the
various hues of the rainbow.
They match, and they belong to one another,
and the one moves into the other, and
together they make a whole.
Beware of that Christian who is always nibbling
away at one passage of the Word of
God, or one thrust of Scripture, or one
doctrine of Scripture, or one theme of Scripture.
The probability is that he's never seen the
wood for the trees.
Because when one sees the wholeness, the panoramic
wholeness of Scripture, then one ceases to stress
the one over against the other.
Now may I just refer very briefly to
two doctrines of Scripture which have been so
stressed in recent times that they have done
disrespect to what the Scripture says about the
law of God.
The first is the great doctrine of love.
Not so much the love of God for
us, but the doctrine of Christian love for
God, and for one another.
Now you have read about it and you've
heard it.
People have gone so far as to say
it quite bluntly like this, love God and
do what you like.
Of course this was said many a long
year ago by others before us, but we've
we've caught hold of the slogan, we've we've
resurrected it from the past, and there are
many people who say that today.
Now you notice what that does.
If you live according to that principle, then
you have no objective point of reference.
It doesn't matter what you do, if you
can say well I'm doing it out of
love for God, it passes.
Now the doctrine of love for God is
absolutely vital.
Paul tells us that when we are justified,
that the love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
And every Christian man and woman should know
something in this.
We should be serving the Lord and worshipping
the Lord, not just out of duty, but
because the love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts.
We want to do it, we rejoice in
it because we love him.
But this doctrine has been so pressed that
the doctrine of the law has been lost
sight of.
Take another one.
There are those who in recent times have
said so much about the doctrine of Christian
liberty, that they are bound to nothing.
In other words they have stressed what is
an unquestioned doctrine of Scripture.
The liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
Of course he sets us free.
Paul rises to heights of ecstasy to say
we are no longer under the law.
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
This is one of the most blessed things
that we can preach about.
A Christian here tonight, however young he is,
however mature he is, it makes no difference.
But if you're a man or a woman
in Christ, sin can never never send you
to hell.
It can never master you.
It can never bully you and send you
to perdition.
It can't do that.
Sin shall not have that dominion over you.
It's no longer that kind of tyrant.
It can't be.
But the same Paul who preaches that doctrine
says that the gospel does not do away
with righteousness, but establishes the law.
The last verse in Romans 3.
There is a sense in which we are
free from the curse of the law.
But that does not mean to say that
the law has got nothing more to say
to us.
It is so important therefore to see these
biblical truths in perspective.
And I have felt constrained tonight to dwell
upon this theme.
I believe it's important.
The place of the law of God in
the life of the God honoring or the
godly man.
What place should the law of God have
in my life?
Now I'm taking it in this context because
here is a background for the Good Friday
and the Easter message.
That's the context from which my text is
taken tonight.
It is God sending forth his Son.
Sending forth his Son to be made in
the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
And the purpose of it all?
Mark it.
In order that the righteousness of the law
might be fulfilled in us.
God expects that men and women who profit
savingly from the coming of his Son should
be law abiding and law keeping and law
honoring.
That the righteousness of the law might be
forgotten by us.
No.
Minimized by us.
Not on your life.
Fulfilled.
Filled to the full in us.
Now I want to bring out what is
laid upon my heart in terms of three
main statements.
And the first is this.
We start at the beginning.
The gospel of Jesus Christ recognizes the regal
majesty of God's law.
The gospel recognizes the majesty of the law.
We must never think of the gospel of
Jesus Christ as a way to circumvent the
law.
To get around it.
To get out of it.
I'm afraid it is possible for those of
us who are preaching to suggest sometimes something
akin to that.
And the law of God corners us and
the gospel kind of gets us out somehow.
Now it does that.
It saves us from the tyranny of the
law.
But in a way that meets all the
requirements of the law.
Therefore it doesn't circumvent it.
It faces the challenge of the law and
it meets it.
And having met the last demand of the
law in the cross on which he died,
Jesus opens up a new and living way
out of hell in this present life.
Into the hell of God's pardon and God's
peace.
The Christian does not circumvent the law.
God in Christ deals with the demands of
the law in virtue of which we are
saved.
Now let's look at it.
First of all in this respect, the gospel
recognizes the regal majesty of the law in
its power to condemn the transgressor.
What is the background to the gospel of
Christ?
Well the background is essentially this.
Mankind is in danger.
Why did God send his son?
Why Bethlehem?
Why Calvary?
Why did God send forth his son into
this world?
Well the answer is simple.
You can take it from anywhere you like.
It's the same.
Let me quote John 3 16 again.
For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish.
You see the truth is this.
God saw the world in danger of perishing.
Our world was in danger as God saw
it and therefore in order to meet the
situation he sent forth his son.
Now the question is this.
Why was the world in danger?
Why was any man in danger?
Why is any man in danger tonight?
Well the answer is because of the majesty
and the demands of the law of God.
The need of the world arises because God's
law tells us what God requires of us
and none of us are able to meet
it.
On the contrary we've broken it.
We've slighted it.
Some of us have it and we read
it and we can even repeat large areas
of it but we don't keep it.
We know enough of the law to say
that so-and-so is wrong and so
-and-so is wrong but we don't apply
it to ourselves.
The reason why men are perishing is this.
We have the law of God first of
all in our natures, the light that lighteth
every man that comes into the world and
then we have it in the Word of
God but despite the fact that we have
it inwardly in our consciences and externally objectively
in the Word of Scripture we have not
kept it.
So you can bring the Scriptures together like
this.
Sin is the transgression of the law.
Add to that the great dictum of St.
Paul, the wages of sin is death.
And you have the human problem.
All of us have sinned and come short
of the glory of God.
What is the sin?
It's the transgression of the divine law and
the wages of sin is death.
Therefore the whole world is lost before God.
Have you noticed therefore that when Jesus Christ
came into the world and he came to
quote my text for sin to be a
sin offering, never on one single occasion do
we read of him turning to the Father
and saying, look Father there's no need to
be quite as hard upon sin.
There's no need to judge all men and
to condemn all men because of sin.
Your judgment is harsh, your judgment is cruel.
Let's cut it down a little bit.
Don't let's be too hard on men.
You know you never hear the Lord Jesus
Christ say that.
Even though he was the one who was
to take the curse of sin and its
consequences in his own body, he accepted it
as right and as necessary.
In other words he respected the regal majesty
and sovereignty of the law.
Come a step further.
The gospel recognizes the same regal majesty of
the law when it expounds the pattern of
behavior that is expected of believers.
It takes many people by surprise.
I hope it doesn't take you good people
tonight by surprise to be told that when
we come to the New Testament and to
the ethical teaching of the New Testament, fundamentally
what we have in the Gospels and Epistles
is an expansion of the Ten Commandments.
Now I have found that people have been
more surprised by this statement than about any
other statement that I've ever made.
But this is not my statement at all.
This is true.
When you come to the ethical teaching of
the New Testament, be it in the Sermon
on the Mount or in the Epistles, what
do you have?
I believe it is true to say that
75% or so can ultimately be referred
back to an expansion of the Ten Commandments
on the law of God in the Old
Testament.
In the Ten Commandments, for example, with reference
to man, we have the principles of filial
respect for parents, Exodus 20 12.
The principle of respect for life that we
must not kill.
The respect for moral purity we must not
commit adultery.
For other people's property we must not steal.
For other people's good name we must not
bear false witness against our neighbor.
And then respect for the providence of God
in the ordering of our life.
Now I can't pursue this point, but I
want to make the dogmatic statement once again.
When you come to the ethical teaching of
the New Testament, what we have fundamentally is
the taking up again of these principles and
applying them to Christian men in the light
of Christ and in the light of Pentecost
and of our privileges.
Now if Jesus Christ does anything, he makes
the law stronger in the case of the
Christian than in the case of the Old
Testament believer.
As when, for example, he turns a man
to a man and says, I'm not simply
telling you not to commit adultery.
I'm telling you that.
But he that looketh after a woman to
lust after her has sinned already in his
heart.
That's not abrogating the law.
That is intensifying the legal requirement.
That is making the standard higher.
That is building upon the law and saying
your righteousness will have to exceed that of
the scribes and the Pharisees.
In other words, a man who knows something
about the salvation which Christ works is a
man whose motives become godly and God-honoring.
Not only the deed, not only the act,
but motives.
Those principles of course can be simplified in
terms of the two great commandments.
Or they can be can be expanded in
terms of the Sermon on the Mount or
applied in various ways.
So you see the gospel honors the law.
And then in this respect the same gospel
respects the majesty and divinity of the law
by its avowed purpose of so changing sinners
that they cease to be lawbreakers and learn
to keep the commandment.
Just as Jesus came not to destroy the
law but to fulfill it.
My text says that it is the purpose
of the gospel that the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us.
There are two things that always need to
be distinguished in the New Testament.
The debt accruing from our inability to keep
the law in the past has been paid
for by Jesus Christ dying for us.
We couldn't pay that.
He's done it.
You and I had broken the law.
He came in as the sinless one and
he paid the consequences of our breaking the
law of God.
In other words he died our death.
He died for us.
Right.
He met the righteous demands of the law
in our place in his body to the
tree.
That's one thing.
Now if you trust that Christ he is
pledged to fulfill the righteousness of the law
not more not now for you.
He's done that but in you.
In me.
And it's that little preposition in which is
the key one in my text.
Christ fulfilled the requirements of the law for
us on the cross.
He is now pledged to be the kind
of Savior who will carry on with us
and deal with us and chastise us and
comfort us and feed us and shepherd us
and what else in order that the righteousness
of the law may be fulfilled in us.
Now if you want me to be doctrinal
tonight the biblical name for the first is
justification.
We are justified because Christ died for us
to take our sins away and he is
risen again to impart his righteousness to us.
But the name for the second is sanctification
whereby the law of God is fulfilled in
us.
In other words we become like the Christ
who said my beat is to do the
will of him that sent me and to
finish his work.
So much then for our first point the
gospel thus recognizes the regal majesty of the
law.
Now we must all do that.
Second main statement I want to make is
this.
The gospel which recognizes that the law has
such sovereignty such majesty is nonetheless realistic concerning
the inability of the law to make men
right with God.
The power of the law is great.
I want to hurry over this.
The power of the law is tremendous.
It is tremendous to illumine the mind.
If you had lived all your life without
for 50 years shall we say without knowing
the content of the Ten Commandments.
And you simply imbibed what men know and
can tell you without any reference to the
teaching of the Ten Commandments.
And then you suddenly came against up against
these.
You will discover that you're in an entirely
different world here.
Armed only with the Ten Commandments a man
has a most remarkable key to knowledge.
I don't think that the Christian Church has
ever realized the wealth that we have in
in those ten statements.
And their power is tremendous to illumine the
mind.
If I only had these I would know
how to worship God.
You know really there is no statement in
the New Testament that compares with the opening
verses of Exodus 20 about the worship of
Almighty God.
But then so it is concerning my attitude
to my fellows.
Armed only with these I would have the
key to the ethical requirements of God.
A power to illumine the mind.
But the power to arouse the conscience.
It's a remarkable thing this word.
Most remarkable.
You know I came to Christ under the
welter of one sermon preached in the power
of the Holy Spirit.
But that one sermon taught me the power
of God's law to convict.
For the wages of sin is death.
But the gift of God is eternal life.
How is it that that can come over
to a pagan and communicate the sense of
urgency and of shame and of guilt that
runs for refuge to the cross of Christ?
There's only one answer.
It's the power of the law.
I have known strong men and so have
you I'm sure.
Who have spent weeks and months unable to
sleep, unable to eat under conviction of sin
because of what the law said to them.
Unfortunately this is not as evident in these
days when the gospel is so watered down
and people can't listen to a real exposition
of the gospel today.
We can't take it in.
We are being taught not to think.
Our thinking is being done for us and
we are imbibing pre-digested ideas.
We do not think for ourselves.
Time was when in our churches there were
people who could think theology and talk biblically
and delve into the depths of the great
truths of scripture.
You know those times are gone.
But when the law is recognized for what
it is it churns in the soul and
it makes a man aware of the might
of God and the condemnation of God.
It has power all right but it can't
save me.
It hasn't got the power to save.
The law can condemn me.
The law can illumine my mind and arouse
my conscience, send me to my knees and
make me acknowledge that I'm but a worm
in the sight of God.
But it can't lift me up again.
It can bring me down from my arrogance
but it can't lift me up.
But now you notice my text says that
that's not due to any weakness in the
law nevertheless.
Oh how a correct understanding of scripture is
important here.
Notice what it says.
For what the law could not do.
Well why not if it's as powerful as
we have said.
Aha read on.
What the law could not do in that
it was weak through the flesh.
Now let me explain that.
In order not to spend too much time
with it I thought what illustration can I
give of this truth.
And I found one of my fellow countrymen
a man who's now in the glory and
to my mind the best conceivable illustrations of
this.
And I hope you don't mind if I
give it to you it's not mine.
He was preaching on this text or rather
on the whole passage.
And in course of his dissertation it was
to students.
He said yonder is a man of robust
health, constitution strong and arms muscular.
In the spring months he goes to the
garden to dig up the soil.
But the handle of the spade is cracked.
What avails the strength of the man with
that cracked handle.
The strength of the man for digging purposes
is not an atom more than the strength
of the instrument in his hand.
His strength is converted to weakness in the
crack.
In like manner says he human nature is
cracked by sin.
Torn and warped from top to bottom.
What availeth it that the law itself is
strong.
Its strength is turned to weakness because of
the perversity of the flesh in man.
Then he uses another illustration which puts the
capstone on it as far as I'm concerned.
Yonder says he is a young man eminent
for the beauty and elegance of his handwriting.
Now there aren't many of these around so
you understand that this fellow was living a
long time ago.
Penmanship used to be something to be proud
of.
People scroll these days they don't write.
Yonder is a young man eminent for the
beauty and elegance of his handwriting.
Give him white paper tolerably hard and his
writing is a delight to the eyes.
But give him blotting paper rough and soft
and the ink runs wild.
His skill is turned into an ugly blot
in the softness of the paper.
Thus says he the law was designed to
write the character of God in human nature.
But the moment it comes into contact with
the depraved hearts of sinners the ink spreads
and it all becomes a smudge.
Can you see it?
All the power of the law is there.
But the law cannot save me not sanctify
me because of the smudge and the sin
and the weakness in my nature.
Therefore the law cannot save a sinner.
It cannot justify.
It cannot sanctify.
Its power is there but it cannot affect
what God would do in saving and sanctify.
That brings me to my last point which
is this.
The gospel establishes the law and its dignity
and its authority by the very Savior it
announces and the salvation it imparts.
The Savior presented in the gospel and the
salvation proclaimed uphold the righteousness of the law
and its requirements.
Now the gospel introduces us to a Savior
who according to my text condemned sin in
the flesh.
Now there is a positive statement but it
has reference to this subject of fulfillment of
the law.
Jesus Christ condemned in the flesh all law
-breaking.
Everything that was a transgression of the law.
Everything that was short of the fulfillment of
the law.
Jesus Christ condemned.
Now how did he do that?
You see the statement is very far-reaching.
Jesus Christ says in effect that anything in
my life anything in yours short of that
which the law requires is to be condemned.
How did he do that?
Now can I just refer to my text
without going beyond it for a moment.
In the first place he did that in
this way.
By refusing to be born of sinful human
nature.
That is sinful human nature which had broken
the law and depraved itself.
Jesus Christ refused that kind of flesh.
You notice in what we have here in
verse 3.
God sending his own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh.
Now will you please notice that word likeness.
The Bible does not say that God sent
forth his Son in sinful flesh.
It doesn't say that.
In fact the Bible says the opposite but
let me pursue that for a moment.
Jesus Christ did not assume sinful flesh.
That's heresy.
He was conceived of the Holy Ghost in
a virgin's womb who was overshadowed by the
Most High God himself.
So that no taint of her maternal sin
and nature should impinge upon the holiness of
the fetus.
Now if you don't believe me let me
quote to you from Dr. Luke.
Luke 1 verse 35.
The angel said to her the Holy Spirit
will come upon you and the power of
the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore the child to be born of you
will be called holy, the Son of God.
Of course this is a subject all its
own and I can only refer to it
in passing.
But can you see the two points?
Jesus Christ is not the Son of a
man.
He is conceived of the Holy Ghost.
He was not tainted by his association with
the virgin in her womb because of the
power of the Most High overshadowing her and
overshadowing him.
So that the fruit of the virgin's womb
is said to be holy.
He refused to be born as an ordinary
boy to an ordinary father and take human
flesh to his deity.
He condemned sin by saying no no no
I must come into the family and I'm
not coming that way.
I'm not coming that near to sin.
Our Lord nevertheless came in the likeness of
sinful flesh in order to condemn sin in
the flesh.
And you say why then did he come
in the likeness of sinful flesh?
For this reason he had to come so
near to us in our sin as he
possibly could in order that knowing our experiences
from the inside he might be a sympathetic
high priest and be able to serve to
the uttermost.
So he assumed to his deity, he took
to his deity a humanity like ours sin
apart.
And he did that because he would come
into our human situation living in a in
a body like unto ours with this one
exception.
So that in this body he could condemn
sin in the flesh.
The Son of God then inhabiting such a
body did precisely that.
He condemned sin in the flesh.
How did he do it?
First of all by refusing to yield to
any of its temptations.
He would not yield to anything that came
to him, any temptation of Satan from any
area whatsoever.
He refused to yield to temptation and thus
he condemned it.
He had nothing to do with it.
But he condemned it in a very special
way in and through his cross.
Sometimes we tend to forget and there is
a very slick theology abroad which somehow doesn't
want to remember that part and parcel of
the work that our Lord did in his
death was to condemn Satan.
Paul says that in his death our Lord
Jesus Christ exposed Satan and condemned him.
Jesus said now is the judgment of this
world, now shall the prince of this world
be cast out.
In other words he's going to condemn him.
He's going to expose him and he's going
to take the sting out of sin and
master the enemy so that all those who
follow in his train and have faith in
him may live a life of victory through
him.
That's salvation.
A Savior who condemned sin in the flesh
by abstaining from it and ultimately by exposing
Satan and by judging him when Satan thought
that the one under judgment was none other
than the Son of God.
And lastly and most important of all, the
gospel imparts a salvation which demands righteousness in
the flesh.
Righteousness which is nothing more or less than
the re-establishing of the divine law for
godly people.
Now let me put it like this, my
text is clear.
So that the just requirements of the law
might be fulfilled in us who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit.
Two things I want to say about it.
The first is this, just as the Old
Testament Scriptures told us what kind of a
Savior was coming so it told us what
kind of a salvation we might expect.
We are told in many places in the
Scriptures in the Old Testament what kind of
a salvation to expect when the Messiah comes.
One element in that salvation is this, the
law of God say the prophets will be
written into our hearts.
Now I want to quote two of the
classical passages and I'm near the end.
Let me quote from Jeremiah chapter 31 verse
33.
God is here speaking of the days of
the new covenant and this is what he
says in in course of doing so.
I will put, he says, my law within
them and I will write it upon their
hearts.
Now just imagine this is this is this
is this is thrilling that it could be
done at any rate.
But this is the kind of salvation that
God said he was going to bring about
through the new covenant.
Now that means this, here I have a
Bible, here I have the law of God
written in this.
The prophet Jeremiah says that part and parcel
of the salvation of the new covenant that
is coming through the Messiah and the benefits
of which are going to be released through
him resides in this principle.
The law which is in here in the
book of God written by the Holy Spirit
will be written into the hearts of men
by the same Holy Spirit.
So that deep without calls unto deep within.
And wherever there is a man who is
a genuine Christian there is something in his
soul which says that book condemns me but
it is right.
Its standard judges me but I know it
is right because the same Holy Spirit that
brought this law in there has written it
in my heart and if I am born
again of the Spirit and indwelt by him
deep calls unto deep and answers to deep.
Now that's the Christian salvation.
It's not enough to say I love the
Lord.
It's not enough to say Jesus set me
free.
Unless the law of God has been written
on your heart so that you have the
highest possible respect for it and the desire
to honor it.
My friend be careful you may have been
caught up into an emotional cloud that has
no content in it.
Neither is Jeremiah the only one.
Let me quote from Ezekiel.
Ezekiel 36 and 27.
He says the same thing of course but
in his own language.
I will put my spirit within you and
cause you to walk in my statutes and
be careful to observe my ordinances.
Now you can't be clearer than that.
These are the benefits of the new covenant.
I'll put my spirit within you and my
spirit within you will cause you to walk
in my statutes and keep my ordinances.
By the inscribed law and the indwelling spirit
God says that he will secure obedience to
his law from those who benefit from the
new covenant grace and salvation.
Now that is precisely the kind of salvation
preached by the Apostles and written in this
epistle to the Romans.
But the law could not do him that
it was weak through the flesh.
The weakness was not in the law but
in man in human nature.
The law couldn't do it.
Well what must we be forever unable to
keep the law?
God has done something.
What has God done?
He sent forth his own son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
And what has he done?
In the flesh he has condemned sin.
What for?
That the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled in us who now as new creatures
in him justified and saved no longer work
according to the flesh but according to the
spirit who dwells in us.
And thus the law of God is vindicated.
You know every Christian man and woman ought
to be an embodiment of the law of
God being kept and thereby an honor and
the glory to him who is unchanging and
whose law is therefore equally fit.
What does the Lord say to you tonight?
Are you under it?
Have you been redeemed from its curse?
If not I want to tell you that
Jesus met all its demands in your place
and in your stead on the very cross
of Calvary.
You cannot pay for what you have broken
he's done it.
Accept him as your Savior.
Let him give to you, impute to you
his own righteousness washing your sins away and
you will be justified.
Neither can you neither can I in our
own strength keep the law and sanctify ourselves.
But if Christ is living in us by
the Spirit teaching us to walk and directing
us from within, then as we walk not
after the flesh but after the instincts of
the Spirit we may still do what otherwise
we simply could not.
We may keep God's law and even delight
to do his will after the inner man.
Oh may God grant us the grace so
to do for his name's sake.
Amen.