BOTH REWARDS AND PENALTIES ARE INHERENT IN LAW
Love the Foundation Principle with God—The Old Testament Prophets, as Well as Christ, Taught This Great Fact—Those Who Are Under the Law
"God is love." His law is therefore love. When the Lawgiver was on earth, He was asked by a lawyer, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" He did not hesitate, but openly announced: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matt. 22:37-40. This is not an introduction of a new law, but a statement of what is in the law of the kingdom of God. All of the law and the prophets hang upon these two principles—love to God, and love to man. LOVE AND NOT HATRED BRINGS HAPPINESS
These are the inherent principles in the law, which, obeyed, insure rewards, and disobeyed, require penalties. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Rom. 13:10. And love is the basis of happiness. The Lord did not give a law in the beginning because He desired to control His subjects arbitrarily. He gave the law of love because it was fundamental to the happiness of His children. Hatred results in wretchedness, sorrow, and death. Love insures happiness and life. No one ever became truly happy while engaged in hating another. One may, from no other cause than hatred of others, become wretched, emaciated, and ill. "A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones." Prov. 14:30. PROCLAIMED BECAUSE IT WAS THE BASIS OF HAPPINESS
The law of love did not become the basis of happiness because God proclaimed it to be the law of His kingdom. He proclaimed it the law of His kingdom because it was the basis of happiness. Written law is the statement of proper relations of parties embraced in its scope. In the law of the kingdom of God, the first four precepts present the proper relations of subjects to their Sovereign; the last six, the proper relations of subjects to each other. Love121fulfils the entire law. One who loves God will not break any of the first four precepts, and thus invade the rights of one's King. One who loves his fellow men will not invade their rights by breaking any of the last six commands. Inherent in the law of love there is an unqualified requirement that obedient subjects be rewarded and disobedient ones punished. Without this support, law is null and its precepts are powerless. That this is the innate character of the law of the kingdom of God is manifested in its relation to the Lawgiver when He voluntarily stepped beneath the penalty of man's disobedience. Three times, in that last dark hour of suffering while facing the doom of the lost, without hope, He pleaded so piteously, "O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." But having taken the place of the transgressor before the law, the penalty for sin could not be averted without disannulling the law, and it must fall upon Him as upon a transgressor. If there had been any plan known to God by which the inherent penalty for disobedience could be withheld, and the dignity of His law maintained, it would have been produced in response to the heart-rending plea of One who was innocent in Himself but a voluntary victim because of others' guilt. No other plan was known. The dignity of the law must be maintained by the enforcement of its penalty upon the transgressor, or the kingdom of God must be surrendered. Calvary is God's everlasting testimony to a fallen world that the law of His kingdom must eternally endure. Paul, viewing Christ dying upon the cross under the penalty of sin as a transgressor, saw the import of His death as He suffered the penalty inherent in the law, as a testimony to the fact that the law must be maintained or the government of God surrendered, and he said: "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." Rom. 3:31. HE EARNED ITS REWARDS, BUT SUFFERED ITS PENALTIES
But there was another side to the life of Christ on earth. He was perfectly obedient during His entire life for man, as well as obedient in death to the inherent demands of the law upon transgressors. "And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Phil. 2:8. According to the principle inherent in law, He must therefore be rewarded for obedience. In conformity to this principle, it is said of death that it was "not possible that He should be holden of it." Acts 2:24. He therefore arose from the dead and was rewarded. "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. 2:9-11. Christ recognized the demands of the law for perfect obedience, and the penalty of death upon transgressors, both to be equally just. It is therefore very apparent that both rewards and penalties are inherent in law; and further, that wherever just rewards are offered, they are in recognition of obedience to the law. Ps. 19:11. Wherever sin is imputed and punished, this is a clear testimony to the binding obligation of the law. "For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law." Rom. 5:13. TIME, PLACE, OR CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT CHANGE IT
Since from the time the kingdom of God was established until the present, there has never been a period when sin has not been imputed to transgressors and rewards promised to obedient subjects, there has never been a period when the law of the kingdom of God has not held dominion. Time, place, circumstance, can never make necessary a change in a perfect law. To alter a perfect law would necessitate making it imperfect. Human laws may be changed because of their imperfection; but the law of God's moral government never can be altered until immorality ceases to be a sin. PRESENT CONDITIONS IMPERFECT
Under present conditions the operation of the law is imperfect at times, not because there is imperfection in the law, but because of imperfections in sinful men with whom it has to do. The innocent white slave, forced into a life of shame, must meet the consequences of a life of vice. The son must bear the iniquity of his father's sinful heredity, visited to the third and fourth generation. Ex. 34:7. But the innocent victim, remaining in a life of vice only while it is enforced, and springing back into a life of sinless purity at the first opportunity, will be accounted sinless in the execution of penalties against transgressors. The motive is considered in the execution of justice in the righteous administration of God's law. LIFTED ABOVE EFFECTS OF HEREDITY
Regardless of sinful heredity, the man who desires to break from the sins of his ancestors is lifted by the hand of divine justice from the effects of sinful heredity, when he surrenders his heart for cleansing, and is counted free from any share in the penalty attaching to the sins of his father. "Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all My statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Eze. 18:19, 20. Hence in the final execution of penalties for transgression and the final distribution of rewards, every man will receive according to his voluntary relation to God's divine law. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Gal. 6:7-9. In the beginning, it was possible for angels and man to live the law of the kingdom inviolate, and thus to remain forever innocent, and receive the reward of an endless life. But "the wages of sin is death." Inherent in the law, there were, therefore, both life and death. Obey and live, disobey and die, were the inherent reward and penalty placed originally before every subject of the kingdom of God. "And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death." Rom. 7:10. When God called the prophet Jeremiah down to the potter's house to reveal to him His power in shaping character and fixing destinies, He informed him that the nation would be rewarded or punished upon the basis of voluntary obedience or disobedience. "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." Jer. 18:7-10. God is here represented as the great Potter molding the clay. But He most emphatically declares that in molding and fashioning characters and executing judgment which fixes destinies, He limits Himself to the inherent relations of rewards and penalties in the law. Being Himself the Author of the law, and having therefore fixed its inherent relations, He does not merely respect the inherent relation of the law in His administration, and leave the law to operate independently of its Author. But as the potter molds and shapes the clay in harmony with the inherent natural law governing it, so are fixed the destinies of nations and individuals according to their obedience or disobedience of His law. He is not an indifferent spectator to the operations of His moral law, but He is momentarily its operator and its executor. The subject's relation to the law controls His execution of judgment. There is therefore nothing arbitrary in God's administration of the law of His kingdom. He "will render to every man according to his deeds." Rom. 2:6. To be under the law of the kingdom of God and subject to its penalty is to transgress voluntarily its moral precepts. Such as do this are, by the law, denied admission to the kingdom of God. But those cherishing the fruits of the Spirit will find the gates of the kingdom wide open to welcome them as its loyal subjects. "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit122is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Gal. 5:18-23. This is a striking parallel to Christ's instruction given in His Sermon on the Mount. "Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." Matt. 7:16-25. THE LAW DEMANDS OBEDIENCE EVERY MOMENT
The law demands perfect obedience for every moment of life. This demand of the law is inexorable. It is a demand upon rich and poor, high and low, alike, and there is no respect of persons in its demands. It is for this reason that justice is said to be blind. Justice is not blind, it is unqualifiedly just. The ignorant transgressor who dies in sin must perish, although in the execution of his sentence he is judged by a different standard from that by which the one is judged who transgresses with a full knowledge of the law. Only doers of the law can be justified. No subterfuge can excuse disobedience. It is an inherent demand in the law that subjects must be absolutely obedient if they are to be justified in the final act of judgment before the law. "For there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." Rom. 2:11-13. In a later article will be considered the possibility of perfect obedience to God's just law by sinful men. R. C. P.