IS THE LAW WEAK?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 27, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 34.

A CORRESPONDENT refers to an article in this journal which speaks of the weakness of the law, that carnal man could not obtain salvation through the law, because it was weak through the flesh; and our critic thinks this is strange doctrine. He asks:—

How can the law of the All-wise One be weakened by foolish flesh? How can the law be good, and be weakened by the flesh which is not good? How can the law be holy, and be weakened by the flesh which is unholy? etc.

Our correspondent has misunderstood the article to which he refers. God’s law is eternal, immutable, unchangeable, potent with all God’s infinite strength. Puny man can never change God’s law. The writer of the article criticized does not for a moment believe otherwise than this.

But God has made every man a free moral agent. Before man sinned, if he had been faithful to God, the infinite strength of God’s law would have been wrought out in his character. But man sold himself under sin. He became a slave of sin. He perverted God’s law in his own life, so that death resulted instead of life. Now when he would do good, evil is present with him. (See Rom. 7:14-21.) The law is good and spiritual and holy, but man is sinful. The law is strong, but man is weak. The trouble is not with the law, but with the flesh. The law is “weak through the flesh,” which means that sinful flesh can not keep God’s law. Sinful man may try to love his enemy, but his sinful heart prevents him. The law is strong enough to enable him to do it, but the fleshly heart is too weak even to yield to its claims; the flesh will not permit it.

But Christ Jesus, the Anointed of God, the personification of the law, the One who has kept the law, the Being whose character reflects the law, comes to the poor, weak sinner and sets him free, gives him cleansing from sin, imputes his own perfect obedience of the past, imparts to the sinner his mighty life, and then the man can do God’s law. The flesh no longer perverts the law; the Spirit of God in the flesh is stronger than the flesh. Then and not till then the law is kept. The strength comes from God through faith.