S. The Divine Glory in the Law
THE DIVINE GLORY IN THE LAW
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” - Psalms 19:7-9
THERE are here six different names by which the law of Jehovah is called; and six different statements regarding it, corresponding to these different names. All these different names and statements bring out different aspects of the law, especially of what may be called its practical working in the government of God and the experience of the spiritual man. The statements may be conveniently grouped or classed in three pairs. The first pair (Psalms 19:7) have respect generally to the law’s authority in its requirements and sanctions. The second pair (Psalms 19:8) characterise its various particular enactments and its one ruling spirit. The third pair (Psalms 19:9) carry us inward, to the prevailing motive in man’s heart, and outward and upward to the over-ruling discipline in God’s providence, by whose joint operation growing conformity to the law is promoted and secured.
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” The two terms here used, law and testimony, are expressive of sovereign authority, and of that alone. The first is Jehovah enacting; the second is Jehovah witnessing and warning. The law, as what Jehovah enacts, is perfectly incapable of compromise or modification. The testimony of Jehovah concerning it is sure, fixed as his very nature; therefore there is in the law a power to convert the soul, and in the testimony wisdom for the simple.
(1.) “The law of Jehovah is perfect, converting the soul.” Its very perfection fits it for being the instrument of the Spirit in effecting that result. Its being perfect makes it converting. For what is the view which the sinner naturally takes of the law, considered as the embodiment and enactment of what Jehovah requires? Is it not really this, that the law is not so absolutely and inviolably perfect, but that it may admit of abatement and relaxation in his favour? He is always reckoning on some modification of its demands, some accommodation of its terms, to suit his convenience and meet his case. And it must be so. The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Jehovah and the sinner, Jehovah’s law and the sinner’s carnal mind, are at widest variance. To bring about anything like a good understanding, there must be a bending, a turning, a submission, on one side or the other, either on the side of Jehovah’s law, or on the side of the sinner’s carnal mind. On which side shall it be? Need I say which side of the alternative we all naturally prefer? It is Jehovah’s law that must yield, and not my carnal mind. It is the law that must give in to me, not I to the law. Conversion, change of some sort, there must be. I feel this. My conscience makes me feel it. I can have no rest until some sort of agreement is brought about between Jehovah’s law and my mind. And not being willing to yield to the law, I make the law yield to me. Thus I get some peace, such as it is. The perfection of the law is love. But I live on at ease, unloving and unloved, because I fancy that something less, or something else, than love may do.
Let this delusion, this dream be broken. Let me no longer, in this sense, be alive without the law. Let the commandment come, though I die. Let me be made to feel that Jehovah’s law is as unchangeably, as uncompromisingly perfect as is Jehovah himself. Let there be wrought in me a willing consent that it should be so, as well as a deep conviction that it must be so. This is the Spirit’s work, and it is the conversion of my soul. The Holy Ghost showing me the perfect law of love, and causing me to delight in its perfection, dispels the fond imagination that it may, eradicates even the wish that it should, accept at my hands anything short of its full requirement. I would not purchase even my own safety at the cost of any surrender, or any abatement of its perfection. It may be made death to me; but it is good notwithstanding. I dare not look for, I would not have, any life or salvation now that did not make amplest provision for the uncompromised maintenance of its authority and the untarnished holiness of its character and claims; and which did not also secure its being written, in all the perfection of its living spirit of love, in my heart, and put in my inward parts. And it is precisely because the gospel plan effects all this by the work of Christ for me, and the work of the Spirit in me, that I welcome it gladly. Thus the perfect law of Jehovah converts the soul.
(2.) “The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple.” Who are meant by the simple? Let Solomon reply. “The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going” (Proverbs 14:15). “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3). The simple are the credulous ones who listen to any tale, the careless ones who will take no warning. In the face of testimony the most sure, they believe every word. In the face of evil that may be foreseen, they pass on and are punished. The testimony is, “In the day thou eatest thou shalt die.” It is the testimony of Jehovah, and therefore sure. But the simple believe the devil’s he, “Ye shall not surely die.” And so they pass on and are punished. Is not this simplicity, with reference to Jehovah’s sure testimony, as natural to all of us, as is the enmity and insubordination of the carnal mind, with reference to Jehovah’s perfect law? The two indeed conspire to keep the sinner in his sinful state. The enmity of his carnal mind against God disposes him simply to believe the devil’s lie. And his simplicity in believing the devil’s lie emboldens again the enmity of his carnal mind against God. His being the enemy of God inclines him to be the dupe of Satan; his being the dupe of Satan encourages him to continue the enemy of God. This is “that evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” of which Paul speaks. There is a double cause, an evil heart and unbelief, to explain the one sad effect, departing from the living God. Both the evil heart and the unbelief must be dealt with if there is to be reconciliation. The soul must be converted. The simple must be made wise. This also is the work of the Spirit in regeneration. And in accomplishing it, he uses the testimony of Jehovah. He brings home that testimony as sure to my conscience, and makes me no longer foolish to defy judgment, but wise to anticipate it, accepting in Christ the punishment of my sins: being crucified with him, and so dead to sin that I may live unto God; the punishment being over, and life out of death begun. Yes; the testimony of Jehovah is sure. Be wise, ye simple ones, to believe it. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
“The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.” The two words here used to denote the law, present it in a different light from that in which it is first presented to us in the previous verse. There the expressions “law and testimony,” have respect to the inviolable holiness and supremacy of the law, and the uncompromising sublimity and absolute certainty with which it speaks; both in what it requires, and in what, for the enforcement of its requirement, it testifies. Here in this eighth verse, the expressions “statutes” and “commandment” have respect rather to its substance, its matter, its multiform and manifold applications, and its one living and ruling spirit. The phrase, “the statutes of Jehovah,” may be regarded as denoting here its particular precepts and injunctions in detail; while the other phrase, the commandment of Jehovah, may be understood as bringing out its general scope and aim, its one leading line of thought and feeling, its ruling, guiding, pervading principle. For the grammatical distinction of number is to be noted. It is significant. “Statutes” we have in the plural. “Commandment” we have in the singular. In its matter or substance, whether viewed summarily or in detail; viewed at any rate as brought to bear on the diversified experience of man’s inner and outer life, the law of Jehovah is all but infinitely diversified. It is, as Jehovah himself may be said to be in his actings towards men, a manifold and multiform unity. There are statutes, many and various, applicable in all sorts of ways to the all but infinitely varied exigencies and occasions of human life. But all throughout the commandment is one. The dominant ruling element running along all and inspiring all is one. Pervading and enlivening the multitude of the statutes is the one sovereign power of the commandment. And as the statutes, being the statutes of Jehovah, are right, rejoicing the heart, so the commandment, being Jehovah’s commandment, is pure, enlightening the eyes.
(1.) By the statutes of Jehovah we may understand the separate and several precepts of the law, as it is broken up into particulars, and brought to bear in detail upon the different realms of thought and affection, or of words and deeds, which it is designed to regulate and rule. In the ten enactments or statutes of the decalogue we have the primary instance of division. They are the primary forms into which the law is broken up. These however may, every one of them, be subdivided into a variety of practical applications, corresponding to the almost endless varieties of human feelings and human interests, in the vast field of human life with which the law, in its statutes, has to deal. Viewed in this light the point of the statement is substantially this; that the law of Jehovah, thus widely ramified, and minutely as well as variously applied, is owned as right all through, and therefore felt to be always the minister and means of joy to the heart.
It is a great and gracious spiritual attainment that is here indicated, implying a special work of the Spirit in the soul. For what is the natural tendency of your minds as to this matter? Is it not to acquiesce or profess to acquiesce generally, and complain or repine in detail?
Generally, you recognise the divine government of God over his intelligently responsible creatures by a moral law that is perfect, converting the soul, and a testimony sanctioning it so solemnly as to make wise the simple. That Jehovah should reign absolutely, always, and in all things, and should have his reign acknowledged willingly and unreservedly by all beings capable of apprehending it, is a truth you may in a vague way generally admit. But let us change the singular into the plural. Let us come to particulars. Let it be statutes, specific orders that come to bear upon us. Let them be particular articles applicable to what practical experience demands, directing distinct practical steps, and admitting of no postponement or evasion. Let them be such as these; “Cut off this right hand;” “Pluck out that right eye;” “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor;” “Suffer thy little child to come unto me.” Or the statutes may be reduced to a still more humble and homely formula. Mortify this fleshly lust. Renounce that worldly pleasure. Refuse to eat the doubtful flesh, if not for your own sake, at least for your brother’s. Quench the fire of unruly passion beginning to burn. Crucify the unholy or the uncharitable desire that you feel here and now rising up. Suppress the angry retort, the offensive rejoinder, that is upon your very lips. Be guided in the particular instance of the one choice now to be made, the one word now to be spoken, the one act now to be done, by the very same scrupulous conscientiousness as you would feel if the question were whether you would own or throw off the authority of Jehovah and Jehovah’s law in the mass and altogether.
Thus brought home to you, not generally but in detail, what are the statutes of Jehovah to you? Are they right, rejoicing the heart? Alas! and again even alas! for the enmity of the carnal mind against Jehovah, and insubordination to his law as perfect, and his testimony as sure. It comes out not in rebellion against his or its authority, on the whole, but in stifled murmuring against particular exercises of that authority. The law of Jehovah is administered in statutes. And these statutes of Jehovah touch you specifically and particularly at all points of your spiritual experience and moral conduct. They are ever coming across some fondly cherished fancy; some favourite habits, some tolerated infirmity; one frowning on this undevout thought, another on that unloving and unlovely frame; a third on some selfish and fleshly desire, even now on the point of prevailing. You might compound and make terms, on the footing of some general reverential acknowledgment of Jehovah’s law, as generally binding and obliging. But to be hunted thus up and down, over the whole domain of your life’s ongoings by Jehovah’s statutes, as if they were spies and officers of justice, tracking you at every step, and watching you at every turn; that is more than you can stand. It is hard, you say; it is grievous; it is more than you can well bear. If you obey or submit, it is with a grudge, as if you did well to be angry. And it may be also with a secret purpose to indemnify yourselves afterwards by some less noticeable license. When the statutes of Jehovah are thus regarded, they do not rejoice the heart. But they cannot be thus regarded by you, if you have known the law of Jehovah in its perfection, converting your soul, and the testimony of Jehovah as sure, making wise the simple, and you, of the simple the simplest. Thoroughly convinced by the Spirit that it is you who must bend or turn to the law of Jehovah, and not the law of Jehovah to you; thoroughly convinced also that the testimony of Jehovah on behalf of his law is sure enough to make the simplest and most foolish trifler with the awful sanctions of Jehovah’s law tremble, and be serious, and be wise; you do now indeed, submit yourselves, all guilty as you are, to the very law of Jehovah which condemns you. For you submit yourselves to Christ, himself the law-giver, who is the end of the law, his own law, for righteousness to every one that believeth. Believing on him, being one with him, you reach the end of the law; you realise its fulfilment in that righteousness of his which you appropriate as yours. You therefore are reconciled to the law-giver in terms of his own law; the law being the very means, - in the Son made under it, and by the Spirit making you under it, like the Son, - of your reconciliation to his Father and your Father, of his God and your God. How then can you now cherish hard thoughts of Jehovah the law-giver, or of the statutes of his law? “Will you not rather say with the Psalmist: “I know, Jehovah, that thy judgments are right.” “I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right.”
It is this conviction of the rightness of Jehovah’s statutes; the perfect rectitude of all his requirements, of all that he appoints you either to suffer or to do; which alone will make obedience, in all the details of daily life, a real rejoicing of the heart. For it is that alone which will make such detailed obedience a free-will service and not a grievous bondage. And that will do it. That will give to you, whatever at any time or in any circumstances the statute or appointment may be, a calm trustfulness and serenity of mind. It will hush every doubt and silence every misgiving. It will sweeten every labour, and soothe every trial. Only believe assuredly that the statutes of Jehovah are right, and you will find that they do rejoice the heart. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith;” that very faith of ours, wrought in us by the loving Spirit, and itself working by love, which begets in us the loving persuasion and assurance that none of the commandments of him whom we love, nay, rather, who loveth us, can be grievous; and that the statutes of Jehovah are all right, rejoicing the heart.
Try to realise more and more this blessed conviction of the rightness of Jehovah’s statutes. Consider whose statutes they are, and in what relation you stand to him. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Can he ever in any of the statutes he ordains for judgment, be doing anything but what is right? Is he not your Father, reconciled to you, embracing you in his fatherly love always? Are not you his children in his beloved Son? Do you not receive in your hearts the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father. How can you ever possibly suspect him of unkindness and unfairness? He that “spared not his own Son, but gave him up for you all, how shall he not with him also freely give you all things?” Are not all things for your sake? Believe, be sure, that whatever he ordains, is right, right in itself, and right in the long run for you. Carry this conviction always with you into all the affairs of life, the most trifling as well as the most important. How joyful will it make your heart in every work you have to do, in every surrender or sacrifice you have to make. No more giving with a grudge! No more giving way with an inward sense of soreness or defeat! No more reflecting on God’s procedure or providence! No more questioning of his ways! No more feigned or forced submission. You walk with God at liberty when you have respect to all his commandments. You run with hearts enlarged in the way of his precepts. And when hard pressed by what vexes flesh and blood, or what wounds your tenderest and best affections, you can look up into the face of him whose statutes you own to be ever right, and with joy still in your hearts amid deepest grief exclaim: My Father, thou art the all-wise God, thou doest all things well.
(2.) “The commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes.” The law, which has just been represented as manifold in its details, is yet one in essence, one in principle. It may be broken up into a variety of particular precepts or prohibitions. It may have different sorts of statutes applicable to different cases, circumstances, occasions. But these are not really of a fragmentary or disjointed character. They are not isolated, detached, diverse in nature or essence from one another. They are all pearls strung on one and same golden thread. The statutes, which are many, have one centre, the commandment, the commandment of Jehovah; or as I would understand the phrase, what is called and called rightly the spirit of the law, its general ruling spirit as distinguished from its special minute requirements and applications. Of this spirit of the law, it is said that it is pure, that is, as I take it, transparent, lucid. The commandment of Jehovah, his absolute right to command, his sovereign prerogative of rule and government, admitting of no questioning, no remonstrance, no reply; that is the spirit of the law, the pervading principle which, running through all its separate details and manifold practical inferences and deductions, gives coherence to them all and makes them all one. It is a principle which may well be called pure. It has a clearness and transparency all its own. There is no obscurity, no ambiguity, no complexity or perplexity about it; no difficulty or doubt; nothing to embarrass or mislead. It is, as we are wont to say, clear as crystal, clear as noonday. Hence it has a wondrous efficacy to enlighten the eyes. It is a sovereign specific for obliquity of vision, mental or moral. It will effectually cure an evil eye. It is the source and secret of singleness of eye. And if the eye is single, the whole body is full of light.
Such, I apprehend, is the real force and meaning of this statement of the Psalmist. It brings out a principle which will clearly lead us through all the exigencies of practical duty. Were the law merely a loose heap or chance medley collection or collocation of miscellaneous specific rules, however numerous these might be, and however definite and precise in giving directions, each for its own special department, still cases might occur for which it might seem that no provision was made; questions might arise, or circumstances might emerge, which it might be felt to be difficult to adjust, by any one or more of the exact martinet regulations issued in the most voluminous statute book. In point of fact something like this is frequently experienced in the life of believers seeking to order their walk according to Jehovah’s statutes. There are seasons and occasions when you do really find yourselves at a loss to determine what the path of duty is. Amid competing calls and conflicting claims, you scarcely know which to prefer, or what way to turn. Considerations of various kinds, all serious and important, weigh with you, drawing you in various directions. You begin to calculate contingencies, and balance scruples; you hesitate; you halt; you are fairly at a stand.
Ah! in such cases, how great a matter it is just to have the eye single, or as it is in the Psalm, to have the eyes enlightened! To be purged from malice and partial counsel; to have the heart fixed; to have one thing alone to seek above all, and through all. Thy will be done! That will go far to clear up all. For it is the wisdom which cometh from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” Sophistry, casuistry, special pleading, as to particular rules being binding in particular cases, or as to the lawfulness and the limits of what you hold to be all but unavoidable relaxation, are all scattered and driven to the winds, if there is an honest insight into the spirit of the law, the clear and transparent commandment of Jehovah, his sole, absolute, and sovereign right to command. Let that be clearly and cordially recognised. Let there be an unqualified acknowledgment of his right to command, his prerogative of rule over our whole selves, and all our doings. Let it be with us, “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth!” “Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?” “Here am I, Lord, send me!” That is to me and in me practically the spirit of the law, that is singleness of eye, according to the Lord’s manner of speech. It is the enlightening of the eyes which the Psalmist here so highly prizes. If only you have this clear principle of unreserved submission to the commandment of Jehovah - to Jehovah commanding - burnt into your hearts through the experience of your oneness with Christ in his obedience unto death, and kept ever pressing on the vision of your spiritually enlightened eyes, the occasions will be very few indeed on which the path of duty will not be made plain enough before you.
“I will guide thee with mine eye,” is the Lord’s promise to you. But it is a promise connected with a past yet ever present experience, and an ever present purpose for the future. There is no guile now in your spirits; no more keeping of silence on any matter of controversy, or contradiction between you and Jehovah. There is full confession, and frank forgiveness; you making a clean breast of all in you that is against God, because you now at least see how he opens up all his heart in love to you. There is real, present, conscious reconciliation. And then there is deliverance from your needing, as the horse or as the mule, to be kept in with bit and bridle; governed by mere legal force and terror.
Now God guides you with his eye. The eye of Jehovah is ever upon you and upon the next step he would have you to take. Only let your eye be so single, let your eyes be so enlightened, as to meet his eye, whatever its indication may be; and to count its slightest glance, for or against what you may be balancing in your mind, equivalent to a commandment cutting short all debate, and shutting you up to instant decision. Even so, Lord, let it be with me! “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until he have mercy upon us.” In this spirit let the commandment of Jehovah be pure and clear to you. Let it be clearly understood and determined in your whole soul and conscience; let it be a fixed and settled point; that Jehovah does command, and must command, and should command, and that you would have him to command - him alone, him always, him in everything. That is really the eye of the Lord guiding you. Let it be so with you, your eye being single, your eyes enlightened by this eye of Jehovah commanding! Ah! then there will be a great and thorough purging of your inward vision, a great dispelling of doubt and darkness, a great falling away of scales, pulling out of motes, casting out of beams; a great clearing up of the way in which Jehovah leads you, step by step, one step at a time; enabling you to walk in the light as he is in the light. For, in truth, in almost every instance in which you feel as if you knew not which of two or more apparently competing or conflicting precepts to obey; or which way to turn at a point where several roads meet; or what work to do when calls to work solicit you on every side - you will find, if you examine yourselves, that some want of loyalty and love to God lies and lurks at the bottom of your hesitation; that it is about your own mind rather than his you are at a loss; that you are on that account making excuses and gaining time; while all the while you are secretly conscious that a single glance of spiritually enlightened eyes towards the open eye of Jehovah would end all controversy, and prompt instant action. Be ready therefore always to proceed with enlightened eyes upon the pure and simple commandment of Jehovah; “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Listen to the wise man’s counsel: “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” Be ye then up and doing for the Lord. And now let me remind you of the footing on which you must be with reference to the law of Jehovah, if you are to have any such apprehensions of its excellency, its equity, its light, as the Psalmist evidently had. You cannot be on the footing on which you naturally are towards it. You are not under the law, as once you were. You are not under it as prescribing the terms of your acceptance With God, and pronouncing sentence of condemnation upon you as failing to fulfil these terms. As to all that, you are not under the law but under grace. You are justified freely by the grace of God, through the righteousness which is received by faith. You are saved without the law by grace. And now you come to be under the law in a quite new sense, and after a quite new fashion. Justified, so far as you are concerned, apart from the law altogether, you put yourselves anew, the Spirit puts you anew, altogether under it again.
Nay, not again, but now really for the first time. Only now are you in a position, only now have you the heart, to see clearly, approve and embrace warmly, own cordially, the principle or spirit of the law; Jehovah commanding; Jehovah entitled to command, Jehovah welcomed as commanding absolutely, in all things sovereign and supreme. Yes! and only now, reconciled, renewed, sanctified, as well as justified, all by grace alone, can you look at all the ordinances and appointments of God, in all the way by which he is leading you, as parts of his leading you forth by the right way that you may go to the city of habitation; - statutes, therefore, to be recognised as, all of them, from the highest trial of patience to the most trifling trial of temper, right, and therefore really, when rightly used, rejoicing the heart. “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger from Satan to buffet me. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”
“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” The law of Jehovah is thus seen to be unquestionably and unchangeably authoritative, uncompromisingly perfect in its requirements, and infallibly sure in its testimony. It is also a law altogether right and reasonable in its most minute rules and regulations, and most transparently pure and clear in its broad general principle and ruling spirit. But the actual keeping of it is still in question. To secure this there must be a moving power; a twofold moving power; on the one hand, a moving power in those to whom the law is given, an inward disposition and inwrought motive, inclining and impelling them to obedience; and on the other hand, a moving power towards or upon them; an over-ruling providential agency from without, fitting into and promoting the newly implanted energetic principle of obedience within.
What then is this twofold moving power that is to secure, in the case of all his people, the actual keeping of Jehovah’s law - that law which is at once so authoritative in its requirements and its sanctions, and so equitable and clear in its substance and spirit. It is on their part their fear of him, and on his part his judgment, his administrative, governmental, judicial dealings with them. They fear him, and he judges, chastens, controls, guides, and governs them. In their hearts there is a holy, filial awe of him. In his hands there is a rod of loving discipline and wise rule for them. And this fear of Jehovah in them, being clean and enduring for ever, with those judgments of Jehovah towards them, which are true and righteous altogether, secures the uniform keeping of the law, as perfect and sure, right and pure throughout.
(1.) The fear of Jehovah is clean, enduring for ever. The cleanness here ascribed to the fear of Jehovah, may be regarded as corresponding to the purity which is mentioned immediately before (Psalms 19:8) as characteristic of the commandment of Jehovah. These two aspects of the law indeed - its being the commandment of Jehovah and the fear of Jehovah - fit into one another so closely as really to embody one thought. By the one phrase, we may understand objectively the spirit of the law as given from above; by the other, we may understand subjectively the spirit of the law as received and realised within. Jehovah commanding: that is the spirit of the law speaking from above. Jehovah feared: that is the spirit of the law, apprehended and embraced inwardly. For we pass here from the objective to the subjective view of the law; from the law considered as coming forth from Jehovah, to the law considered as dwelling in you; written in your hearts; put in your inmost parts. The commandment of Jehovah becomes the fear of Jehovah. And the transition is made by the clearness of the law’s one grand principle and essential spirit being made effectual by the Holy Ghost for enlightening the eyes; making the eye single that the whole body may be full of light. Hence you need not wonder if you find that the distinctive quality attributed to the law, as described in ver. 9, corresponds so closely to what characterises it as described in the previous verse. The one is in fact the complement of the other. The fear then of Jehovah is clean; unalloyed, unsullied, undefiled. It is unalloyed, as gold fresh from the fiery trial, and free from the admixture of any baser metal. It is unsullied, as the priestly diadem and robe, intolerant of any spot of filthiness or foulness. It is undefiled, like the camp of Israel, or the courts of Israel’s God, or the person of any Israelite within that camp and these courts; unpolluted by the contact of leprosy, or a dead body, or any such unclean thing. All these instances are suggested when it is said that the fear of Jehovah is clean. And they all contribute to fix the character of this fear of Jehovah; what it is not, and what it is.
It is not, and cannot be, the fear of bondage, of which Paul speaks when he says, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” It cannot have anything in common with mere servile terror; that instinct of alarm, that sudden dread of consequences, that overmastering feeling of necessity, which holds so many men in a certain reluctant allegiance to the law; bridling them from some excesses, forcing them to some compliances. It is allied rather to the perfect love which casteth out all such fear, and is itself that very love.
Few things indeed are less entitled to be called clean; few things are more contaminated by the presence of unworthy motives, vile affections, and dead works, than the conscience and heart in which that other sort of fear, sordid, selfish, and slavish, reigns. And yet where is the natural conscience and heart in which it does not reign? There must first be a removal of the enmity against God and insubordination to his law, which sin has wrought. into our very nature; there must be a thorough, conscious healing of the breach which guilt and lust have caused; there must be a renewal, reconciliation, peace, submission, before any true reverence, any genuine, solemn awe, any fear of Jehovah that may be spoken of as clean, can be felt or acknowledged as regards the obligation to keep his law. I may be constrained to own some subjection to a law whose spirit I dislike, and a lawgiver from whom I am estranged. I may yield a certain measure of enforced subjection. But what, in all this, is my real state of mind? I am balancing considerations and calculations of the merest and meanest selfishness. I am trying to effect a compromise between the authority that in spite of myself binds me, and my own inclination to rebel against it. I am ever asking how much good I must do, how much evil I may tolerate. I am ever dealing in evasions and excuses. And, regarding God as a hard master, I count myself almost entitled to elude or modify as much as I can his unwelcome demands; reckoning somehow on allowances being made by him, so that on the ground of some heartless compliances with the letter of his commands, his forbearance and forgiveness may be extended to me to the uttermost. This is not a clean motive. Neither is it enduring. There is no stable or abiding principle in such fear as that, to rule always and everywhere my heart and life. On the contrary, its sway is fitful, uncertain, capricious. There are alternations between anxiety amounting almost to the horror of despair, and indifference partaking of the security of the scoffer’s defiance, “Where is the promise of his coming?” My mind is wayward and wilful, now agitated by the most abject terror, and again abandoned to all sorts of base imaginations and presumptions of indulgence and impunity. But the fear of Jehovah which is clean, endureth for ever. It is a constant and consistent, a permanent and perennial principle, of thought and action. It does not operate by fits and starts, at intervals, upon impulses. It implies a settled, serene frame of mind, always the same, reverential, conscientious, simple, and guileless, fixed in and on God. It is clean; purged from all sinister aims, all cherished lusts, and the whole miserable scheming of dead formality. It is high and holy, unselfish, incorrupt, unworldly. It is the cleansed and enlightened eye of honour, ever honourably meeting the open, trusting, loving eye of a reconciled God and Father. And the fear of Jehovah, being thus clean, endureth for ever.
How clearly does all this prove that except a man be born again, born of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God! For the kingdom of God, what is it? What but Jehovah commanding, on the one side, and Jehovah feared on the other. God in Christ commanding supremely; God in Christ feared lovingly! The whole design of the gospel is to establish the sovereignty of God in his own heaven, and the fear of God in your hearts. What indeed is the gospel but this, in theory or principle, Jehovah commanding, in actual effect, Jehovah feared? True, it is a plan of mercy, a method of forgiveness and reconciliation, of free grace and perfect peace. But consider always the great fact on which it is based; God “hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Enter into the meaning of this fact, believe it, realise it, as applying to yourselves personally, to each one of you individually, apart. Let the Spirit work in you a living and appropriating faith in the truth of it. Upon this footing, emptied of self, willing to be saved by grace alone, by grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life; enter, hesitate not to enter, into the kingdom of God, new born, new created; no longer under the old curse, but tasting the new blessing of acceptance in the Beloved!
What a revolution have you experienced! Never before, never otherwise, could you cordially or with consent apprehend Jehovah’s right to command, or any exercise of that right, except only as the assertion of mere absolute and arbitrary will enforced by irresistible power. Never could you feel in yourselves any fear of Jehovah, except only the sort of fear which makes a slave crouch under the lash of the tyrant whom, at heart he hates, and whom he is ever seeking to deceive and defraud. But how is it now? You are no longer a servant merely, but a child. You are no longer a condemned criminal, full of angry suspicion, but a reconciled son, full of loving faith; having the love of God shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given you.
Ah! what a blaze of light now irradiates and illustrates the grand idea of Jehovah commanding! It is the one idea which, absorbing all other thoughts, fills your whole souls as you gaze alternately on Sinai and on Calvary! Yes! let Jehovah command; let God reign supreme. The sovereignty of his mercy, the freeness and fulness of his love, the riches of his salvation, the whole evangelical system, in short, of electing, redeeming, regenerating, justifying, sanctifying, saving grace, all, all culminate and centre in the everlasting throne, on which now, with eyes enlightened, you are evermore beholding as a great sight, the Lord reigning, the Lord commanding. Nor does the sight either offend or appal you now. It awakes, indeed, deepest reverence and most solemn awe; but no abject terror any more. A loving reverence, a confiding awe, it awakens; a holy, affectionate, filial fear, clean, pure, abiding; such a fear as ennobles and elevates, while it humbles and subdues your whole moral nature and spiritual frame; such a fear as the angels feel, who ever veil their faces before his presence, as they stand ever ready to do his pleasure.
(2.) As this fear of Jehovah is clean, and therefore always enduring, so the judgments of Jehovah are true, and righteous altogether. The administration of the law, in the providence of God towards you, is in entire harmony with the establishment by the Spirit of the law in you, as Jehovah commanding and Jehovah feared. The spirit or principle of the law viewed objectively, as given forth from God, which is Jehovah commanding, becomes in your believing recognition and acceptance of it, subjectively and experimentally Jehovah feared. And now, as regards the enforcing of it on the part of God, it passes into yet another formula, as it were, and becomes Jehovah judging.
Jehovah judging; that is Jehovah governing; applying the rules and enforcing the sanctions of his law, in his providence. For all the dealings of the Lord with you, to whom he has thus graciously revealed his law as magnified and made honourable by his Son in your behalf, and in whom he has wrought by his Spirit entire acquiescence and consent; all may be summed up in the general thought of Jehovah judging you. In all his treatment of you, Jehovah is acting towards you the part of a judge. He must needs so act towards you, since you are under law to his Son, to Christ. He is ruling you, governing you. All the things that befall you are administrative and judicial acts; in their bearing upon you they are Jehovah’s judgments. And in that view they are altogether true and righteous; true, as really fitting into the realities of your souls’ experiences; righteous as bringing these experiences into accordance with the type and model of them, the righteousness of God himself There is thus a perfect harmony and correspondence between the judgments of Jehovah towards you, and the fear of Jehovah in you. The work of grace forming in you the law as “Jehovah feared,” and the work of providence administering towards you the law as “Jehovah judging” are quite at one. Providence goes along in harmony with grace.
There must first and primarily be grace; grace to embrace and welcome the law as not condemning me, but really justifying me, through the law-satisfying work of Christ; grace to receive the law into my inner man, and have it made there by the Holy Spirit, part and parcel of my very nature. To one in that mind, the judgments of Jehovah, his providential dealings in accordance with his law, appear true and righteous altogether. They have ever been so regarded by all in whom the fear of Jehovah has been. “I know, Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” “Righteous art thou, Lord, and upright are thy judgments.” But how little are we inclined even at the best, to view the dealings of Jehovah’s providence in so solemn a light! We call them accidents; we trace them to second causes, or take no account of them, except to murmur and complain. But they are all Jehovah’s judgments; they all serve to bring out what is the fear of Jehovah in your minds and hearts. All of them every day may, and must do so. For there is no need of waiting for extraordinary turns of fortune or great vicissitudes of good or evil, to discover to others, or at least to yourselves, what manner of men you are; what manner of spirit you are of, with reference to Jehovah and his law. Little things may do it as well, perhaps better. A little disappointment, a little provocation, a little vexation, a little cross, a little care; or, on the other hand, a little mercy, a little kindness received, a little service rendered, escape from a little danger, may serve, alas! to make it all too palpable, how little you have learned to enter into the spirit of the law, which is Jehovah commanding, and Jehovah feared.
Oh! that amid the details of daily conduct, the minutiae of ordinary life, there were more of this devout acknowledgment of the judgments of Jehovah! more waiting for them! more observation of them! If there were, you would know far better than you do now; experimentally, by trial, how altogether righteous they are, all of them, from the least even to the greatest. From every one of them; not only from every meditative walk you take among the glorious works of God, under the arch of heaven and light of the glorious sun, and from every hour you spend in the devout study of his law; but even from every casual occurrence in the common streets, and from every incident of your daily meals and nightly rests; you might learn a lesson in the exercise of meek submission to law as Jehovah commanding, and holy, reverential, loving trust in his administration of all things. And in regard to all his dealings with you, even those which seem most unaccountable and mysterious, those dark dispensations and sore visitations, which in his unsearchable wisdom he is pleased to appoint for you, if only you accept them as his judgments, parts of that judicial rule and administration by which, as a Father, he is training, correcting, schooling you, for his glorious service here and hereafter; if thus you receive them as Jehovah’s trials of your allegiance, and patiently and in faith await the issue, you will ere long be satisfied that amid all their bitterness they have some sweet cordial for your soul; that you are governed in the wisest manner and led by the right way; that the judgments of Jehovah are true and righteous altogether.