The Ten Commandments Still Binding.
DR. H. CLAY TRUMBULL comments in the Sunday School Times, on a portion of the third chapter of Romans, as follows:— “What things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped.” Verse 19. Many a man is ready to say, in sweeping terms, that he has tried to do about right, and that he is reasonably satisfied with his life-record. But if you can bring any such man to look at God’s law in detail, requirement by requirement, he will have to admit, if he says anything at all, that he has not lived up to that law, by any manner of means. There is not much comfort for us sinners in the ten commandments. If we are to have our deserts according to our performances by that standard, we are lost. There can be no question on that point. And the severest putting of the ten commandments which the world ever knew, was the Sermon on the Mount. If any man could bring himself to say that he has not been guilty of a breach of the ten commandments, as he understands them, the Sermon on the Mount will stop his mouth effectually. He knows that he is lost forever, if he is to be judged by the law’s requirements as they are there defined and elaborated. It is true that there are men so thoughtless or so shameless as to say that they want no other gospel than the Sermon on the Mount; but they are men whose mouths ought to be stopped in the face of that inspired demand for absolute holiness in life and in thought and in heart; for those things are spoken that every mouth which would claim Heaven as a right may be stopped by the sinner’s recognition of his violations of God’s law as there disclosed and applied. “Through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.” Verse 20. It is not that the law creates sin, but that the law shows what is sin. Man has no way of knowing what is right and what is wrong except as God declares it to him. A man may want to do right or want to do wrong, he may intend to do right or intend to do wrong, without being sure what is right or what is wrong; but it is only when God’s law defines the limits of right and wrong, that man can know what is sin. A man’s uninstructed conscience tells him that he ought to do right, but it does not tell him what is right. It is by God’s law that a knowledge of sin comes to a man. Until a man knows what sin is, he cannot be sure whether he is sinning or not, while he is doing “as well as he knows how.” But you and I have the law to show us what is sin, and we have our own consciousness to show us how often and how grievously we have sinned. “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction.” Verse 22. There is no distinction in God’s sight; but there are very marked distinctions in man’s sight. Man makes a clear distinction between a little sinner and a great sinner; and man’s ideas of the relative magnitude of sin are of his own framing. Man is pretty sure to attach more importance to a sin against man than to a sin against God. Stealing or getting drunk is commonly supposed to be a more real and a more flagrant sin, than refusing to acknowledge one’s need of a personal Saviour, or to trust one’s self to the one Saviour provided against guilt and its consequences. And there is no time when men are readier to make distinctions in sins and in sinners than when they are passing on the course of one who has just died from among them. If he was a man who sinned greatly according to their measuring of sins, they admit that he needed a Saviour; but if he was what is called a fairly upright man in his outward conduct—why, isn’t it possible that he went to Heaven on his merits? After all, wasn’t it a little uncharitable for Paul to insist that everybody needs a Saviour; that “there is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”? That is a question that is well worth considering. “Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid; nay, we establish the law.” Verse 31. The gospel of Christ does not do away with the requirements of the law of God. It simply shows a way of salvation to those who fail of obeying that still-binding law. Every vital requirement of God’s fundamental law is as real and as important now as thirty centuries ago. Every breach of that law is as truly a sin now as then. Not one of us is entitled to violate God’s law in a jot or a tittle, on the strength of our discipleship of Christ, or of our trust in him for salvation. But as all of us have broken that law, and as all of us are liable to violate its requirements, we commit ourselves as sinners to Him who fulfilled that law, and who has a right to save from under its very curse those who so commit themselves to him. “Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid; nay, we establish the law.”