Under Grace

Fourth Sermon on a Pauline Text

YJE ABE NOT UNDER THE
LAW, BUT UNDER GRACE. — Rom. vi. 14.

‘/”^OMFORT ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.’ Now, the Apostle Paul comforted the people of God, as they had never been comforted before. So completely did the Apostle fulfil this command, that there arose a sect of Christians in the early Church who held that Paul could be none other than the promised Comforter Himself. Paul in every epistle of his, and especially in his Epistle to the Romans, had so comforted their hearts that those early heretics began to hold that the Apostle must surely be the Holy Ghost Himself made flesh, and ministering among sinful men. ‘And I almost agree with them,’ said Origen, in his extraordinary admiration of the Apostle Paul. ‘That man Paul,’ said another, if he was a man, and no more.’

Now, in order to get at the full comfort of this great scripture, let us ask. What, exactly, is the law? And what, exactly, is grace? And then

O 209 we shall the better see what it is to be under the law, and what it is to be under grace.

Well: the law is the law. And the law can never be anything else but just the law. God Almighty is a righteous God. God is righteousness itself. God never can be unrighteous in anything He is, or in anything He says, or in anything He does. God is just even in justifying the ungodly. God is perfect and unspotted righteousness, and the law of God is just His perfect and unspotted righteousness righteously administered over angels and men. When it seemed good to Him, Almighty God in His love and power and wisdom, created in knowledge and righteousness and holiness the race of creatures to which we belong. As Paul has it, mankind was made under the law. And as every law, to be a law, must have its own sanctions and securities, its own rewards and punishments, so had that law under which God made man. ‘Of every tree of the garden thou may est freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”* A law of God, with a sanction and a security, a reward and a punishment, altogether worthy of such a Lawgiver, and of such law-abiding subjects as Adam and Eve had it in their power and their free will to be: they, and their children. And from that primeval law there were drawn out afterwards the ten commandments of the Old Testament, and the two commandments of the New Testament: perfect love to God, and perfect love to all men. Now, we know that whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. That is the law, and that is what it is to be under the law.

And then, what is grace? Grace is love. But grace is not love simply, and purely, and alone. Grace and love are, in their innermost essence, one and the same thing. Only, grace is love adapting itself to certain special circumstances. As, for instance, love may exist between equals, or it may rise to those who are above it, or it may flow down to those who are beneath it. But grace has only one direction that it can take. Grace always flows down. And thus it is that sovereigns are said to be gracious to their subjects. But though a subject may loyally and truly and devotedly love his sovereign, yet the most loving of subjects is never said to be gracious to his sovereign. Because grace always flows down. Now, among many other relations that God holds to us, He is our Sovereign, and therefore His love to us is always called His sovereign grace. It is called mercy also, because we are in misery on account of our sin. But it is called grace above all, because we are not only in an estate of sin and misery, but because we are so infinitely beneath God, and are in that and in every other way so utterly unworthy of His love. And thus it is that with its infinite condescension toward us, grace has the most absolute freeness in all its outgoings and down-flowings also. And as grace is free, so is it sure. Nothing can change, or alter, or turn away, sovereign grace. And, with all that, it is unconditional. That is to say, as no merit of mortal man ever drew down on him the grace of God, so no demerit and no ill-desert of any man on whom it has once rested, will ever cause that grace to be withdrawn. It is not of works, lest any man should boast. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed. If by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. Grace, then, is grace, — that is to say, it is sovereign, it is free, it is sure, it is unconditional, and it is everlasting.

Now from all this, keep it always well in mind, that the law is the law, and that grace is grace. And that the law can never say but this one thing: Do and live. And every day that you try to do the law of God, and to live by doing it, you will be right glad to remember that the law is the law, and that grace is grace. For if the law continually commands what you cannot do, then and there grace comes forward, always true to herself: always promising, and offering, and bestowing. ‘The gospel,’ says John Wesley, ’ is one great promise.“* Just as the law is one great command. Keep that deep and everlasting distinction and difference ever before you, and continually make application of it to all that is within you. And that simple definition and distinction, kept ever in mind, will save you many a hard day and many a dark night. Keep well under grace, as the text has it. Be well taught in grace. Read the books of grace. Sit under the preachers of grace. Offer the prayers of grace. Sing the psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, of grace. And do the works of grace. For grace has her own works also. Then said they unto Him, What shall we do that we might work the works of God .^ Jesus answered, and said unto them: This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom God hath sent. And again, this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment. Learn to say about grace what Paul said on Mars’ hill about the God both of nature and of grace. Learn to say. For in grace we live, and move, and have our being. You cannot say that about the law. Paul, with all his obedience, could not say that about the law. * I was alive without the law once,”* says Paul about himself; * but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.’ For the law always kills. It came, indeed, to kill, in order that grace might make alive. If life could have come by the law, then grace had come in vain. No mortal man has ever lived, to be called life, under the law. But grace brings true and everlasting life. Live, then, in grace, and in nothing else. Rise up every morning in grace. Congratulate yourself every morning as you awake, and say, O my soul, we are not under the law, but under grace. Go out to your day’s work under grace. And return home, and lie down on your bed again, ever more and more under grace. Live, and die, and rise again, and go to judgment, and go to heaven itself, and all under grace. The last words of Mr. Honest were, Grace reigns. So he left the world.