How Does It Come to You?

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 30, 1913

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38

How Does It Come to You?

—Read it in John 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The text does not teach of two different things, but of the same; for the law given through Moses is declared to be God’s truth. “Thy law is the truth.” Ps. 119:142, 152. But received from the human source, it is simply law; and law only condemns. Received through Jesus Christ, it is grace and truth. The Jews thought to make themselves wholly righteous by living the law as they received it by Moses, and failed to reach the righteousness of God. But the child of faith who looks beyond the sin to Jesus Christ, the sinner’s Saviour, finds no condemnation in Christ Jesus, for the law in him is the law of life, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made us free from the law of sin and death. Rom. 8:1, 2. So it is all-important as to our attitude toward the law. Does it come to us in its mere outward form, or do we receive it through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ? In the one case, it may develop an outward rigid attempt at obedience, as it did in the Jews who sought righteousness under the old covenant. Moses did not so receive it. He looked beyond the glory of the condemnation to the glory of righteousness through the mercy of God, and received it. The same faith will bring the same righteousness and the same joy, received now, and it will lead the receiver to say, “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.”