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The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
though the moral law be thus far abolished, it remains as a perpetual rule to believers. Though it be not their Saviour, it is their guide. Though it be not foedus, a covenant of life; yet it is norma, a rule of life. Every Christian is bound to conform to it; and to write, as exactly as he can after this copy. 'Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid.' Rom iii 31. Though a Christian is not under the condemning power of the law, yet he is under its commanding power.The Ten Commandments, 44
Satan gives Adam an apple, and takes away paradise. Therefore in all temptations let us consider not what he offers, but what we shall lose.
Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.
The Bruised Reed
The moral teaching of Christ and his apostles is the old law deepened and reapplied to new circumstances--life in the kingdom of God, where the Savior reigns; and in the post-Pentecost era of the Spirit, where God's people are called to live heaven's life among themselves and to be God's counterculture in the world.Concise Theology, Section 34
Christ in fact had not the least intent of making any change or innovation in the precepts of the law. God there appointed once for all a rite of life which he will never repent of... so let us have no more of that error, that here a defect of the law is corrected by Christ; Christ is not to be made into a new law-giver, adding anything to the everlasting righteousness of his Father, but is to be given the attention of a faithful interpreter, teaching us the nature of the law, its object and its scope.
God is forced to mortify sins by afflictions, because we mortify them not by the Spirit.
usually he empties such of themselves, and makes them nothing, before he will use them in any great services.The Bruised Reed (3)
If men can find no comfort and yet set themselves to teach and encourage weaker Christians, by way of reflection they receive frequently great comfort themselves. So doth God reward this duty of mutual discourse; that those things we did not so fully understand before by discourse we come to know and relish far better. This should teach us to love and often engage in holy conference, for besides the good we do to others, we shall be profited ourselves. Divine Meditations
Certainly when we undervalue mercy, especially so great a one as the communion of saints is, commonly the Lord takes it away from us till we learn to prize it to the full value. Consider well therefore the heinousness of this sin, which that you may the better conceive. First, consider it is against God's express precept, charging us not to forsake the assemblies of the saints (Heb. 10:20, 25). Again, it is against our own greatest good and spiritual solace, for by discommunicating and excommunicating ourselves from that blessed society, we deprive ourselves of the benefit of their holy conference, their godly instructions, their divine consolations, brotherly admonitions, and charitable reprehensions, and what an inestimable loss is this? Neither can we partake such profit by their prayers as otherwise we might, for as the soul in the natural body conveys life and strength to every member, as they are compacted and joined together and not as dissevered, so Christ conveys spiritual life and vigor to Christians, not as they are disjoined from but as they are united to the mystical body, the church.
The church of Christ is a common hospital wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.
Let us not look so much who are our enemies as who is our Judge and Captain, nor what they threaten but what He promises; we have more for us than against us. What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory? None are here overcome but those that will not fight. Therefore, when any base fainting seizes upon us, let us lay the blame where it is to be laid.
We are weak, but we are His; we are deformed, but yet carry His image upon us. A father looks not so much at the blemishes of his child as at his own nature in him; so Christ finds matter of love from that which is His own in us. He sees His own nature in us. We are diseased, but yet His members. Whoever neglected his own members because they were sick or weak? None ever hated his own flesh. Can the head forget the members? Can Christ forget Himself? We are His fullness, as He is ours. Bruised Reed, 107
It is the greatest bondage in the world to have most freedom in ill.
the law of God must be perpetual from its very nature.
The law of the Old Testament is not a mere datum or a mere code book, but the personal word of the great King of the universe. And who is this King? From eternity to eternity the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1). The King is the trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Son was always at work from the beginning. The law of Moses is a reflection and foreshadowing of the absolute perfection and righteousness of Christ, rather than Christ being a reflection of the law.
We might be tempted to rewrite this today and say, "Foolish is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and wastes his time meditating on it day and night." We might think that only a legalist takes delight in the law and spends more than five minutes a year meditating upon it. But God says, "Blessed is the man…."How Does God\'s Law Apply to Me?
Has anything changed about God that we would disregard His directives? Is His word still law? Is He still as sovereign as He was in the Old Testament? Is the God of Israel and of the New Testament church a commandment giving God? His word is law, and His law is His word, because His law expresses His will. And that will, that law, is sweeter than honey (Ps. 119:103).How Does God\'s Law Apply to Me?
For a Christian to say, "I once loved the law, but now I love Christ and ignore the law," is simply not to love Christ, because Christ loved the law.How Does God\'s Law Apply to Me?
A man's house is his castle, and God's law, as well as man's, sets a guard up upon it; he that assaults it does so at his peril.Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1:291
One great use for which the moral law serveth is to bring men to a sight and sense of their sins and imperfections, and humble them before God: Rom. 7:7, 'I had not known sin but by the law, for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet;' and to undeceive them of conceits of their own goodness and righteousness. Look into thy bill, what owest thouhttps://www.monergism.com/rich-young-ruler-exposition-mark-1017-27-ebook
The law is the same everywhere, and the will of God is always one, because God is but one and is never changed. Nevertheless, the commandments were first set down in tablets by God, who was the beginner and writer of them; and after that, were again written into books by Moses.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
First of all, therefore, let no man think that before Moses' time there was no law, and that the law was first published by Moses. For the same special points of the moral law, which Moses sets down in the Ten Commandments, were very well known to the patriarchs, even from the beginning of the world.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
The MORAL law is that which teaches men manners, and lays down before us the shape of virtue; declaring with it how great are the righteousness, godliness, obedience, and perfection that God looks for at the hands of us mortal men.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
The law of God, openly published and proclaimed by the Lord our God himself, sets down ordinary rules for us to know what we have to do, and what to leave undone, requiring obedience, and threatening utter destruction to disobedient rebels. This law is divided into the MORAL, CEREMONIAL, and JUDICIAL laws: all the parts of which, and every point of which, Moses has very exquisitely written, and diligently expounded.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
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