Your ShelfYour Projects

The Law and Our Lack

17%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 25, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 12.

Read the full edition

The Law and Our Lack

By C. M. S.

A GREAT heart-reader is the law of God—a veritable searcher of souls. Spoken amid the thunders of Sinai by the lips of Jehovah himself, it stands as the “word of God” no less truly than any other portion of Scripture; and the characteristics of the Word of God as given by Inspiration fittingly apply to the law of God: “The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Heb. 4:12.
A delicate instrument is this, so delicate as to perform a work which human minds can not conceive of even after it is performed, nor can man measure nor weigh the things upon which it operates. Men have attempted to conform their lives outwardly to its requirements, and counted themselves righteous in the eyes of both earth and heaven. At the same time that law was piling up a record against them that would shut them out of heaven as truly as it does him who makes no pretense of observing its precepts. To the standard of its requirements our lives must come. It demands righteousness. It demands what it can not give, and the demand must be met. Because it does demand what it can not give, hasty minds have thought the law unjust and its Maker unreasonable. They forget that it is not the province of any instrument of test to supply the thing it is testing for. The government inspector of gas-meters requires that each meter come up to a certain standard of efficiency. If it fails to do so, he is not permitted to make up the deficiency, but must put that deficiency on record and let it remain.
A man who owns a piece of property may find it necessary at some time to place a mortgage upon it in order to raise means to extricate himself from some financial difficulty. The law requires that after a certain time that mortgage be paid. The date of payment arrives, and the man is unable to meet his obligation. The law can not meet it for him. It can only demand payment, and if payment is not forthcoming, it exacts the penalty, the forfeiture of ownership. Another comes forward and meets the obligation, and the mortgagor is released.
This illustrates, in an imperfect way, the operation of the law of God in respect to us. We are the debtors, unable to effect our own release, unable to meet the requirements of the law by any power we possess. The law itself can not release us; we can not be released while the deficiency exists; the law can not make up the deficiency. There is One, however, who can do all that for every soul whose heart is set to do the will of God. Jesus Christ meets the requirements of that law on behalf of every such soul who comes unto God by him. Belief in God’s Word, loyalty to his holy law, faith in Christ, his power, his love, his sacrifice in our behalf, put us in the channel of God’s working purpose, set us free from the condemnation of death, and make us joint heirs with him in that “inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.” “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” Rom. 7:12.
C. M. S.