Christ "the End of the Law."
By Rev. Philip S. Moxom
THERE are three ideas that are fundamental in Paul's letter to the Romans, and, indeed, in Paul's entire scheme of thought. These are the ideas of "law," "righteousness," and "faith." All three have their places and their significant relation to each other, in the sentence under consideration: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." The term "law," in the apostle's usage, varies in its meaning. At one time it designates the ritual economy of Israel. At another it designates the specific divine enactments which have their tersest expression in the "Ten Words," and which, thus expressed, represent the entire moral legislation of Moses as distinguished from merely ceremonial legislation. Frequently, also, the apostle uses the word "law" to designate the generic holy requirement of God—that is, the elemental and universal moral law which has its ground in the nature of God. Law, thus conceived, is wrought into the human soul, so that every man feels, because he is man, the obligation of rightness. Now, what is meant by "law" in the apostolic sentence before us? It cannot be simply the ritual law. It must be the expressed divine command, or the inherent divine requirement, to which conscience witnesses, that man shall do and be right. In what sense, then, is Christ the "end" of the law? Many have said that, in the case of those who believe in Christ, the law is abrogated, or, at least, that its claim has been "satisfied," by the righteousness and sufferings of Christ. Just what the word "satisfied," as applied to law, means, is not clear, though, as often used, it seems to have the force of "annulled," or "done away with." But, thus construed, is the saying "Christ is the end of the law" true? Is God's requirement that man shall be righteous ever abrogated? Then there is an end of all morality, and salvation becomes unmoral, if not immoral. Is not the believer in Christ bound by the obligation to be pure, honest, and holy? Did Christ in any way relax the claims of holy law? Did his "work of atonement" terminate in the release of men from any one of those claims? Certainly Paul is the last man in the world to reply affirmatively to these questions. If he seems to us to do so it is evident that we have not got the right view of his teachings. We are helped to a clear understanding of these words, "Christ is the end of the law of righteousness," by remembering that "end" in Greek, as often also in English, does not necessarily mean termination or cessation, but fulfillment. In fact, we have the testimony of such Greek lexicographers as Liddell and Scott, and Drisler, and the distinguished Cremer, that the word here used, telos, never means simply termination, but "fulfillment," "completion," and even "the highest point," "the ideal." This is the word that Peter uses in his first epistle (1 Peter 1:9), where he says: "Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." Here, evidently, "end" cannot mean termination, and must mean fulfillment. We read, then, "Christ is the fulfillment of the law for (that is, unto eis) righteousness." In Christ the obligation of righteousness is met and fulfilled; not for man, as if there were no further claim on man, but by man—actually by the man Christ, and prophetically by the believer in Christ through the mediation of faith. These words must be construed in the light of preceding revelation. Man is sinful. He has not kept God's law, and, therefore, has not lived righteously. But he ought to be righteous. He is under the commandment of law without, and the imperative of conscience within, neither of which he can escape. As a sinner he is under penalty; and penalty already works in his morally disorganized nature. In Christ the holiness and love of God are supremely manifested. Atonement is made in the divine compassion, which, through suffering, quenches wrath and lifts the ban of condemnation. Christ is the Saviour of men, not by the law, for law saves no one except through obedience, and man does not really obey until he is already saved; nor from the law for the law is "holy, and just, and good;" something to be honored and accepted, not to be escaped. He is a Saviour by virtue of the grace and power whereby he "translates" the sinner, through an inner, not an outer change, from a state of conflict into a state of harmony with the law. Salvation is just this process of bringing the soul into that spirit in which the law is fulfilled by ceasing to be mere enactment or imperative, and becoming impulse and motive. This process is begun and carried on to completion through faith. Herein lies the real power of Christianity—that it is the revelation of a personal Saviour, who draws to himself the interest and confidence of the sinful soul and begets in it new moral purpose. We know we ought to be and to do right; but we are bound in evil habit. Righteousness, as a mere abstraction, has no power to renew us. Law, as mere enactment, is incapable of touching our hearts. But Christ, in whom righteousness and law are embodied and suffused with the beauty of gracious love, lays hold of our hearts, touches the springs of desire and volition, wakens us to righteous impulses, and through our faith, becomes in us the fulfillment of the law unto righteousness. By faith we enter into a truly righteous disposition, because by faith we are joined to him in love. We cannot love an abstraction; but we can love a concrete being, in whom the law is revealed as the rhythmic movement of a perfect life. We cannot trust in a proposition; but we can trust in a Person in whom is embodied all excellence of truth and grace. The Pharisaic idea of righteousness was artificial and false. The Pharisee sought to manufacture a righteousness by doing things that had no vital relation to the heart and character. He lived under a law of works. He built himself up in self-flattering virtues and austerities. He fasted, and counted his fasts as if they were intrinsically meritorious. He gave tithes, and claimed credit with God to the full extent of the money's worth. His religious life was a kind of commercial affair, entirely apart from real spirituality. Against this idea Paul flung the combined weight of his passionate speech and his intense personality. He opposed to it his spiritual insight, his clear common sense, his close-knitted argument, and his restless eloquence. He fought it as a deadly heresy to be destroyed at all hazards. This Pharisaic idea of righteousness, though Jewish, was also pagan. The pagan sought to propitiate the gods by sacrifices that were tributes or bribes, or he did things which he thought raised his own value in the eyes of the Supreme Being. But righteousness never consists in doing things, but in being something. It is a relation of heart, and mind, and will—that is, of the thinking, willing, feeling personality—to God. And righteousness is not begun until love is wakened, and love has its spring in faith. In the moral government and development of man, law is necessary. Its enactments are regulative and tuitionary. We must be schooled by compulsion, by command and penalty, into a sense of our wrongness and need. But law can have no renewing influence on a sinner. Only as love comes in to kindle aspiration and beget hope does law begin to pass into the heart as a freely accepted principle of life; and love works effectually only through the medium of trust. Law must pass into life before there can be freedom; and only in freedom is real righteousness possible. No soul that is scourged to right action is righteous. It must choose to be right; and choice has its source in the heart. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." Over against law as enactment is set the life in which is the fulfillment of law and the completion of righteousness. Christ is the law realized in life. He perfectly obeyed the law, because the law was in him an element of holy liberty. He could say: "I delight to do thy will, O God." In his concrete re-expression of law, Christ is also the personal embodiment and revelation of divine love. Thus, while law alone is compulsory, he, as law and love in one, is supremely attractive. He draws us upward toward himself, into the very atmosphere and impulse of righteousness. He subdues us by his tender, pitiful feeling for us. He inspires us by his powerful aid. He gives the heart an uplifting aim; and that aim is not perfection in the observance of rules, but likeness to himself. Righteousness is not to be found in scrupulous, ascetic practices—a kind of moral gymnastics—but in Christlikeness. As that condition is progressively attained, the law passes into fulfillment within us. He who loves Christ loves righteousness, and so is transformed in his deepest impulses. He is assimilated to the character of him whom he loves. Christ is, then, the end of the law for righteousness; not the abrogation of the law, but its re-enactment in the sphere of the individual soul. The atonement has its clear efficacy and sufficient fruit in this that the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who are in Christ Jesus. There is the deepest philosophy in Paul's statement of the doctrine of salvation. He makes no error in his insight or slip in his logic. The whole process is conditioned on faith. To many who look at Christianity superficially this seems an arbitrary condition. And it is arbitrary; it is even immoral, if we think of believing as a mere mental act having efficacy in itself. It then becomes like any other act that is done for merit's sake by the ascetic or devotee. Faith is then a fetish. It is a Pharisaic "work." But faith really being trust in a Divine Person—the revealed and revealing God—it involves the abandonment of will and life to the gracious influence and sweet rule of God. It is "letting God love us" out of our degradation and weakness and sin. It is letting God save us through his free grace in Christ Jesus. The right temper in which we are put by the faith that his love wakens becomes the fruitful soil in which are sown the vital seeds of all virtues. Righteousness springs up in the warmth of holy love as flowers spring up in the wooing sunshine. Hence it comes that the trusting soul has new and strange choices which reveal a growing appetite for goodness. Then, too, the "sinner saved by grace" begins, at first feebly and tremblingly, but with increasing strength to say, "I delight to do thy will, O God." To say that man must have faith in order to be saved is like saying that he must have breath before he can speak and act.339In conclusion, the practical import of the statement we have been studying, and of the whole epistle, on the threefold theme—“law,” “righteousness,” and “faith”—is this: Law, as generic obligation or as specific enactment, is, in a very important sense, external to the sinner. It presses upon him with all its weight of command and penal sanction. If he is ever to be saved—that is, if he is ever to be righteous—the law must pass within him, and become a free, internal impulse. Obedience must rise in the spontaneous choices of his heart. How can this be accomplished? Not by any compulsion, not by any fiction of imputed righteousness, not by any hard will-work and ascetic discipline, but by FAITH, by the acquaintance of the soul with God in Christ, by the sinner’s coming into love with Christ through the revelation of Christ’s grace and beauty, and by the ministry of that Spirit whom Christ unceasingly bestows.—Rev. Philip S. Moxom, in N. Y. Independent.