IS IT LAW? OR IS IT GRACE AND TRUTH?
In John 1:17 we read: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” What a precious text it is! What light it throws upon God’s goodness and man’s perversity! Yet how the text is abused in order to excuse the depravity of man! Who was Moses?—The servant of God. What came through Moses?—The law of God. Was it a good law?—Yes, “the law is holy,” and “just, and good,” and “spiritual.” Why did God give it?—“Jehovah came from Sinai; . . . at His right hand was a fiery law for them. Yea, He loveth the people.” Read the record of the giving of that law in Exodus 19 and 20, in Deuteronomy 4 and 5. God desired to come near to His people through Christ His Son, by whom the law was given. Given by Him, received as it was given, the whole law would have been a series of enabling acts, the Gospel in promise. It would have done for that people what it did for Moses—filled them with glory, which would have become manifest to all. But the people refused to hear. They said to Moses, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” Of course they would not have died if they had gladly received God’s word; it would have proved a message of life. Yet God gave4them their request, and gave His law of life through Moses. From Moses the people received it as law, cold, lifeless precept, which condemned them, and which they could keep at best only in form. Even so God’s Gospel, received through Paul as the words of Paul, brings no life; it is simply a dry, dead form. If the Gospel is to do its work, the soul must go back of Paul to Christ and receive the words, not as the word of men, but as the word of God. 1 Thess. 2:13. If Israel had listened to God’s voice through His Son, it would have been a message of grace and truth as Moses and Caleb and Joshua found it; but they would only receive it as the word of man, and therefore found only condemnatory law. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. What He is now He was then. What His law was then to Moses He wishes it to be to us now, grace and truth. But thousands now are seeing in all His Book the law of Moses, the prophecy of Isaiah, the theology of Paul, and are thus getting only the dry, dead husks of form. When received as from Christ Jesus, it matters not through prophet or apostle, it will bring light, and health, and power. Reader, is the word to you from man or God? Is it cold, empty form of precept and theory, or is it all a-throb with the life and grace and peace and power of God?