The Law and the Conscience: Their Quarrel Made Up

“■ Can two walk together, except they be agreed %” — Amos iii. 3.

One of those unanswered questions which sound forth from the Bible like the thunders of Sinai, and whose echoes grumble long in the hollow caverns of an unclean conscience. A question answered is like a hungry child that has gotten its food; it is silenced and set aside; but a question which you cannot answer keeps you on the rack. It haunts your memory in hours of solitude. It crosses the path of pleasure, and shakes its grim head like a spectre in your face, demanding what you cannot give — a re’ply.

There must be a reason why questions are put in the Bible, and not answered there. It is intended that each learner should sit down, and, by the analogy of faith applied to his own experience, work out an answer for himself Some of the problems are easy, if we were willing to have them solved; others are difficult, even to anxious inquirers. May the Holy Spirit, who put this question in the text, lead us to the truth, which will supply an “answer in peace!”

The question arises out of a particular case in the experience of Israel; but it is expressed in a general form, and contains a rule of universal application: ‘’ Can two walk together” — any two, at any time — “except they be agreed?” I wish to apply the question at present to two who have necessarily much intercourse on subjects of the weightiest moment — God’s law and Brian’s conscience.

The first question is, How they fell out; and the second, How they fell in again. Sin is the cause of the quarrel; and righteousness by faith is the way to peace.

I. The disagreement.
II. The reconciliation.

I. The Disagreement. Notice separately and successively the Fact and its Consequences.

1. The Fact that there is an alienation. God’s law is his manifested will for the government of his creatures. It is the reflection cast down on earth of his own holiness. It is holy, and just, and good; it is perfect as its Author; it knows of no compromise; it cannot bend, by a hair’s-breadth, to keep a whole world of human kind from sinking into everlasting perdition. Observe the steadfastness of God’s laws, as applied to material things. The ocean is under law to God, and by that law it would engulf the whole human race, without swerving from its even course, if they were cast upon it without protection. This is God’s law, and his laws are all sure; they are not “yea, yea, and nay, nay.^^ His moral law, ruling spirits, is as inexorable as his physical law, ruling matter. It knows of no yielding, no compunction. The ocean would submerge a million of men, and the next moment its waves would roll and play in the same regular succession as before; there would be no staggering of resolution, no change of purpose. He who made the sea may miraculously walk on its waves and stretch out his hand to the perishing; but the sea’s law is changeless and pitiless. If another million should be thrown upon the water, they would be swallowed up in the same way. Such also is God’s law for moral beings; it has no softness for indulged sins. Yourselves may have a partiality for them, and think it hard that wrath should come upon them to the uttermost; but the law of God does not participate in that tenderness for favourite lusts. It meets you there like the ocean:” The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’’ It never changes, and never repents. If you sin and perish, its waves roll over you unchanged, to meet the next comer with the same demand: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The law never saved a sinner; if it did, it would be no longer a law. If it softened and yielded at any one point, it were absolutely annulled. If any sin or any sinner is allowed to pass, where is the justice of punishing any sin or any sinner? To bend any commandment for the accommodation of a defaulter is to blot out the law. The law, by its very nature, can have no partialities and no compunctions. It never saves those who transgress; and never weeps for those who perish. It is hard for a man with warm life in his body to sink beneath the waves, and struggle a while, and be choked, and die in the deep unseen; yet though the case is pitiable, no one expects that the sea will become pitiful, and shrink back, refusing to be the executioner. So God’s other law knows no relenting; transgressors are reckoning without their host when they expect to escape by its softness in that day.

The conscience in man is that part of his wonderful frame that comes into closest contact with God’s law — the part of the man that lies next the fiery law, and feels its burning. When first the conscience is informed and awakened, it discovers itself guilty, and the law angry. There is not peace between the two, and, by the constitution of both, they are neighbours. They touch at all points, as the air touches the earth or the sea; neither the one nor the other can avoid the contact. There is need of peace in so close a union; but there is not peace. The first exclamation of the awakened conscience, on the discovery of the law, is, “Hast thou found me, 0 mine enemy? ‘’ “The commandment came, sin revived, and I died” (Rom. vii. 9). The conscience is pierced by the law, the sharp arrow of the Lord; and the convicted feels himself a lost, a dead man. The law’s enmity against a guilty moral being is intense and total; it cannot otherwise be. The enmity of a guilty moral being against the holy law that condemns him is intense and total; it cannot otherwise be. Where there is mutual hatred, distance may diminish its intensity; but where the antagonists are forced into contact, the nearness exasperates the hate. Oh, who can measure, who can describe the disagreement between the guilty violator of God’s law and that law which condemns him? Who knoweth the power of the Judge’s wrath, or of the culprit’s enmity? Who has ever confessed, even to himself, the degree of his hatred to God’s law in all its length and breadth — that law which haunts him through life, dogs his steps in the dark valley, and confronts him in the judgment — that enemy which embitters all the pleasures of sin, which deepens the darkness of the grave, and quenches the hope for eternity? It is a great quarrel that has broken out between a guilty conscience and a holy law.

2. The Consequence of this disagreement between the two is, they cannot walk together. Let us see what this means in the case before us. Enmity tends to produce distance. The law, indeed, remains what it was, and where it was; but the offending and fearing conscience seeks, and, in one sense, obtains a separation. The conscience cannot bear the burning contact of a condemning law, and forcibly pushes it away: “depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” The conscience with the law is like the wicked king with the true prophet (2 Chron. xviii. 7): “I hate him; for he never prophesied good unto me, but always evil.’’ As when a little child, afloat in his tiny boat, angrily bids the dry land depart, and pushes it away; lo! it goes — it seems to go. The feeble effort of the child was sufficient to move himself away from the land; but he is persuaded all the while that the land has removed from him. So, the conscience by instinct pushes against the law, and having pushed itself away into greater indifference, is glad of the comparative relief.

Bub distance is disobedience. To walk with the law, is to live righteously; not to walk with the law, is to live in sin. “Where love is the fulfilling of the law, hate and distance must be the highest disobedience. The Judge looketh on the heart; and whatever the outward conduct may be, the life of one who is thus at variance with the law is a life of sin.

There are certain special features of the disagreement in this case that aggravate the breach and increase its effects.

(1.) The party who has injured another hates that other most heartily, and cannot afford to forgive. The injurer must foment the quarrel; it is his only source of relief The one who receives the injury does not feel the necessity of keeping distant; but the one who inflicts it must fan the flame; and if there be not real repentance and confession, he does fan the flame. The guilty conscience is the oflender, and in proportion to the sense of guilt is his exasperation against the law. It continues increasing until the hard heart gives way, and flows down like water at the presence of the Lord. The wrong-doer is miserable when he whom he has injured is near.

(2.) Another circumstance that makes companionship impossible is, when on one or both sides there is not only the memory of a past grudge, but also the purpose of a future injury. In considering how much the law exasperates a guilty conscience, we must take into account not only what it has said, but also what it will yet do. It will retain the record of all. It will appear as witness and accuser. You know that it will accuse you without mercy. It will not hide one transgression in order to save you. You know that the law is your enemy, and that it will be inexorable and unbending if the day of your extremity should come. This makes you hate the law with a perfect hatred. Besides knowing that you have injured it, you know that it will bring up all against you. While the law and you are in this relation, you cannot love it. You put it away from you with all the strength and steadfastness of an instinctive aversion. You may all the while be speaking respectfully of the law, and even, in a form of words, saying or singing that you love it; but it is only the trembling captive, flattering and fawning on the tyrant who has life and death in his power. If that captive were placed beyond the tyrant’s reach, he would change his tone and defy his foe. As is the love of the helpless prisoner to the conqueror who shakes a naked sword above his head, such is the love of an unreconciled soul to the law that denounces Jehovah’s wrath against all iniquity. To love either the law, or God its Author, while you are still under condemnation, is a natural impossibility; and in these circumstances the profession of love is false. “I love the Lord,” on the lips of the unforgiven being interpreted by the Searcher of hearts, means, I am not able to overcome God, and therefore I shall try to deceive him. What a dreadful state to be in! and yet that is the state of every unreconciled, unrenewed man. ‘’ 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” We shall see. Consider now —

II. The Keconciliation. On this side, too, the Fact and its Consequences may and should be separately explained.

1. The Nature of the Keconciliation, and the Means of attaining it. The agreement between the law and the conscience is a part of the great reconciliation between God and man, which is effected in and by Jesus Christ. He is our peace. Peace of conscience follows in the train of justification.

Peace is accomplished not by persuading the law to take less, but by giving it all that it demands. The law’s demands are satisfied by the Lord Jesus Christ, the substitute of sinners. He has already accomplished the work. He has paid the penalty, and wrought the righteousness. He is God, and his work is perfect; he is man, and his perfect work is available for those who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Our Mediator is, on the one hand, united as God to all the fulness of the Godhead; and, on the other, as man, united to needy creatures; so that out of his fulness we may receive. God has accepted him for all who believe in him, and to his invitation he makes no limit; him that cometh He will in no wise cast out.

Suppose a condemned sinner to hear, and obey, and live, — to receive a righteousness which he could not work. Then Christ’s righteousness becomes his, and with it God is well pleased. The covenant that bestows another’s righteousness free on the unworthy is God’s covenant, not man’s. When God is pleased with it, why should not we? That righteousness is to a believer the same as if himself had wrought it. If he has it by God’s gift, he has as good a title to it as if it had been the result of his own obedience. You do not need now to trust to the lie on this side: My own righteousness is adequate; nor to the lie on that side: The law will relax, and he satisfied with imperfect obedience. You can come forward now, acknowledging on the one hand that you are unworthy, and on the other that the law is unchangeably holy; and yet the law and you may meet in peace. It is satisfied by getting a perfect righteousness, and you are safe in having one to give it. The law is magnified, you are justified, and Christ is glorified. Mark now the reconciliation, — the agreement between the two that had fallen out. The law no longer condemns you, and therefore you no longer loathe the law. It smiles on you, and you can afibrd to smile back again on it. The ground of the controversy has been taken away, and the controversy has fallen. While the law flashed unmitigated anger on you, you answered by impotent flashes of anger against the law. Your conscience is the mirror, and the law is a lamp on high. Whatever colour of light the lamp throws down on the mirror, that same colour does the mirror reflect back to the lamp. As long as a glare of red streamed down from the lamp on the mirror’s receptive surface, so long did the mirror, according to its power, throw up a glare of red; but whensoever the same living lamp began to shed down on the same mirror softened rays of purest white, on the instant the Imid redness fled from that pliant mirror’s face, and it gleamed back, in rays of unsullied whiteness, a glad answer to the lamp that saluted it.

My conscience begins to love God’s law when God’s law ceases to condemn me; and God’s law ceases to condemn me when I am in Christ Jesus; “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. viii. 1).

2. The Effect of the Agreement is obedience to the law — that is, the whole word of God. “Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law’’ (Rom. iii. 31). Such is the result at which we arrive when we have proceeded thus far with the solution of the question in our text. See the whole of the 119th Psalm; observe the tone of it throughout:” 0 how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.’’ You see there a cherished companionship. This is needed in order to actual newness of life; and this is secured only by getting the enmity done away. It is thus with other companions. When there is a quarrel, and a mutual distrust, there is no walking together; but when the enmity is removed and friendship restored, you may soon see the friends by each other’s side again; so also is it with the law and the conscience; as long as there is condemnation, and the word of God is the accuser, there is no cordiality to it. There may be a show of submission, for fear of yet greater evil; but there is no love to the law, and without love there is no real obedience. But the law that beams forth in all the perfections of God and yet has no charge to make in the judgment against you, — the law that glorifies the Judge and yet permits you to stand justified in his presence, — that law and you are at one. You have no cause of quarrel with it. It ceases to accuse, and you cease to keep it at a distance. You draw to it; you walk with it; you can make it your companion; you can take it into your bosom and yet not be burned by its terrors; you make it the man of your counsel. When the two are agreed they are seen walking together. On this principle so important was the sight of Lord Clarend(m and Count Orloff walking together on the streets of Paris during the peace conference there at the close of the Crimean war, that the fact was chronicled and proclaimed all over Europe. The two countries, Britain and Russia, whose ambassadors they were, had closed in deadly strife on many a battle-field. It was a fruit, and therefore a sign, that they had agreed, when their representatives were seen walking together.

The word still condemns the sins that linger in you; but this does not renew the quarrel. You are on the side of the law, and against your own besetting sins. You will love it although it condemns your own sins; you will love it because it condemns your own sins. You will gladly run to the physician, who cuts the gangrened limb away, although that limb be your own right hand. You and the law are agreed; you take it continually with you as the best defence against your foes; yourself will drag them forth and place them under the uplifted sword that they may be slain.

I shall now conclude with a brief practical application, in the old-fashioned way, to sinners and saints, — to the converted and the unconverted.

1. Sinners unconverted, — As long as God’s law and you are left to fight it out, you are not holy, you are not happy, you are not safe. There is a quarrel; there is a distance; you cannot but feel it. It is not safe to leave that controversy unsettled, — that enemy unappeased. God’s law is a dreadful enemy; it will have the last word with its antagonist. ‘’ All flesh is as grass; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Pet. i. 24, 25). That woi-d will terrify its adversary on a death-bed, and meet him again in the judgment. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.” That law will allow no relaxation; that creditor receives no composition from a despairing debtor. He claims all: “Pay me that thou owest.” You may be in a pitiable state, but the law cannot pity you. But what the law could not do, God our Saviour did. Jesus wept over sinners. That same Jesus unchanged looks down on you. His bowels yearn. He complains, “Ye will not come to me.” It is the office of the Holy Spirit to take the enmity away, and apply the blood of sprinkling. God promises the Spirit to them that ask him. “The love of the Spirit” is always ready. Ask and ye shall receive.

2. Believers, — You hope that the controversy is settled, — that the holy law does not condemn you, — that, pleased with Christ’s righteousness now on you, it acquits you as just. Well, why is there so little walking in the company of the friend with whom you are agreed?

Improve your advantage. Keep much by the word. Approach it without fear and estrangement. Ofler the law your Redeemer’s righteousness, and so get near to it in the confidence of love. Get the good of renewed friendship with that once formidable foe. You have many enemies to be subdued, and no companion so helpful as God’s law. Have it always at hand; yea, hide it within your heart, where the thickest of your enemies are. Why so little manifestation of friendship in open habitual companionship? Do I not see you going to some places, and tarrying in some companies, leaving your companion at the door? Inappropriate place, you say, for such a guest, — perhaps it is; but why go into it yourself if it is not fit for your friend? It is a good rule for a Christian to go into no company, and engage in no employment, except where he can take the law of the Lord as his companion all the way and all the time.

But, above all, if you would grow in obedience to the law, realize the privileges “of the gospel. The more that you experience reconciliation through Christ, the more will you walk with God. The more that you receive of his grace, the more you will do to please him. Look unto Jesus; the stream of obedience will flow from the spring of faith. Abide in Christ, and you will bear fruits of righteousness. The word of the Master on high is, “Without me ye can do nothing” (John xv. 5). The answer of the servant on earth is, “Through Christ I can do all things” (Phil. iv. 13).

If sinners had been allowed to trample on the law of God, and step into heaven safe over its dishonoured body, the result would have been more sin; again, if the law had overcome sinful men, and poured wrath to the uttermost upon them all, the result would still have been more sin. No obedience would have been produced by either victory. But when righteousness and peace meet in the Mediator, the “fruit is unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.“”