The Relation of the Law to the Gospel
From Posthumous Sermons of Thomas Chalmers If there be one character of the law of God more distinct and more declared than another, it is the resolute, the unbending assertion which it makes of its own authority, and in virtue of which it will stoop to no compromise with human disobedience. There is in this respect a high state and sovereignty in the divine government, from which it is impossible that it ever can descend.—Page 12. We never can, by our most strenuous observation of the law, arrive at a juridical or a forensic right to heaven. But it is just by our observation of the law, as a law of piety, and purity, and equity, and kindness, that we arrive at that personal righteousness which makes us meet for heaven’s exercises and heaven’s joys—the exercises of a morality that is then faultless, the joys of a then complete and unsullied virtue.—Page 125. Greatly do they mistake the whole design and economy of the gospel, who think that it brings any exemption from the services of righteousness along with it. There is, in truth, a busier and a more abundant service than before; and the only distinction is, that, whereas under the one dispensation you served in the oldness of the letter, under the other dispensation you serve in the newness of the spirit. The obedience now is of a more refined, and pure, and exalted character than ever was obedience then. It is obedience altogether divested of that mercenary character which never ceases to adhere to it so long as, viewed legally, it is regarded but as the term of a bargain. Instead of a constrained stipulation, it becomes a spontaneous offering of love and of loyalty; and, proceeding as it does from the new taste and a desire of a heart now emancipated from the bondage and the terror of a felt condemnation, it is as unlike to what it formerly was as the obedience of a seraph is unlike to that of a slave. And be assured that, unless this new obedience is entered on, you have no part nor interest in the gospel of Jesus Christ.—Page 126.