A Sermon Delivered By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
Therefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. [Ga 3:24,25]
1. Neither the Jewish law of the ten commandments, nor its law of ceremonies was ever intended to save anyone. It was not the intent of the ceremonial law in itself to accomplish the redemption of the soul: by a set of pictures it illustrated the way of salvation, but it was not the way itself. It was a map, not a country, a model of the road, not the road itself. The blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer, could not really take away sin. These sacrifices and offerings were only types of the great sacrifice which in due time was presented by the true priest. There was no inherent virtue in the victims that were slain, or in the services that were observed by the worshippers! Those sacred rites were intended to portray to the minds of the people the real sacrifice which was in the fulness of time to be offered by our Lord Jesus Christ, but they could do nothing more. The king’s portrait is not himself, the picture of a banquet is not the feast itself, and so the grand old ceremonial law was a shadow of good things to come, but did not contain the substance of spiritual blessings.
2. Neither was the moral law of the ten commandments proclaimed on Mount Sinai ever given with the view of sinners being saved by it. When that law was announced by God, he knew that everyone to whom he gave that law had already broken it, and that consequently they could not keep its precepts, or claim justification by their conformity to its requirements. He never intended it to be a way of salvation. Hundreds of years before he had revealed his covenant of grace and the way of faith to his servant Abraham, and the law was not meant to disannul the ancient promise. To look at the law as a Saviour is to place Sinai in the place of Zion, and so to misuse and abuse the law. It was sent with quite a different purpose, as we shall presently try to show you. It was sent to be our schoolmaster until Christ came — the schoolmaster of a world in its minority, that needed to be under tutelage until it attained full age, which would not happen until Christ should be born of a woman, and the doctrine of salvation by faith in him should be fully preached and known.
3. Now I shall try and show, first, the function of the law; then, secondly, the intent of that function — “to bring us to Christ”; and, thirdly, the termination of that function: “After that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”
4. I. We begin with THE FUNCTION OF THE LAW. It is to be a schoolmaster.
5. Here I must endeavour to explain the metaphor. A schoolmaster nowadays is not at all like the personage Paul intended. He speaks of a pedagogue, an official seldom if ever now seen among men. This was not a person who actually officiated as a teacher in the school, and gave instruction in the school itself; but one — a slave generally — who was appointed to take the boys to school, and to watch over them, and to be a kind of general supervisor of them, both in school and out of school, and at all times. A pedagogue was very generally employed in the training of the young; indeed, it was a common and customary thing for the sons of the Greek and Roman nobility to have appointed over them some trustworthy servant of the family who took charge of them. The boys were entirely under these servants; and thus had their spirits broken in, and their vivacity restrained. As a rule, these pedagogues were very stern and strict — they used the rod freely, not to say cruelly, and the condition of the boys was sometimes no better than slavery. The boys (since it was supposed to be for their good) were kept in perpetual fear. Their recreations were restricted; even their walks were under the surveillance of the grim pedagogues. They were sternly held in check in all points, and were thus disciplined for the battle of life. As for the young women, they also had some elderly woman of grim appearance who tried to keep them out of mischief, and suppress anything like cheerfulness or girlish glee. It was considered necessary for young people that they should suffer from rigid discipline and bear the yoke in their youth; so they were all put under pedagogues, whoever they might be, — pedagogues armed with penalties but devoid of sympathies.
6. Now Paul, taking up this thought, which was his idea in the word “schoolmaster,” says the law was our pedagogue, our guardian, our custodian, ruler, tutor, governor until Christ came.
7. Well, then, what is the business of the law as a pedagogue? The business of the law is, first, to teach us our obligations to God. Let us ask ourselves if we have ever heard the law teaching us in that way. Brethren, read the law of the ten commandments, and study each separate precept, and you will find that in those ten short precepts you have all the moral virtues, the full measure of your accountability to God, and of your relationship to your fellow men. It is a wonderful condensation of morals. The essence of all just decrees and statutes lies there. Perfection is pictured there, and holiness is mapped out. No one has ever been able to add to it without creating an excess, not a word could be taken from it without causing a serious omission. It is the perfect law of God, and tells us exactly what we ought to be; if we are in any degree deficient, we are to that extent guilty before God. Now, when the law comes to a man’s conscience, it reveals to him the divine standard of right — holds it up before him — makes him look at it — and apprises him that the commandments do not merely refer to acts and deeds, but with equal force to the words and thoughts from where they proceed. I warrant you it is a humbling day when a man gets to understand that for every idle word that he has spoken he will be brought to account; and when he hears again that his desires and imaginations will all come under divine scrutiny. How startled is the purest mind when it understands that whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart, so that even glances of the eye and thoughts of the heart are offences of the law. The law of God takes cognizance of the entire nature, and reveals the evil which lurks in every faculty. The mere imagination of sin is sinful — the very conception of it, albeit that we should reject it, and never carry it into act, would still be a stain upon our minds, and render us impure before the thrice holy God. This is one of the first works of the law — to show us what spotless purity it demands, and to reveal to us the matchless perfection which alone can meet its requirements. He who has once gazed upon the blinding light of legal holiness will tremble at the memory of it, and abhor himself in dust and ashes as he feels how far short of it he falls.
8. Having done that, the law acts as a schoolmaster next by showing us our sinfulness. We are naturally prone to consider ourselves very good. Our own opinion of ourselves is seldom too low; most generally it is a rather high one; but just as a stern pedagogue would say to a boy who was getting a little proud, “Come along, sir; I must take you down a little”; so the law takes us down. It says, “Look at that precept; you have not kept that; and consider this other precept, for you appear to have forgotten it.” “Look,” says the law, “you talk about your holiness; but have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might? And have you loved your neighbour as yourself?” And then, when conscience, who is a great friend of this pedagogue, replies, “Indeed I have done nothing of the kind,” the conviction of sin comes home to the soul, and sadness reigns. You will tell me, “This is very unpleasant — to be made to feel that you are sinful.” Indeed, but it is very necessary, there is no getting to Christ in any other way. Christ died for sinners, and if you are not sinners, what interest can you have in his death? why should you think that he died for you? You must be convinced of your sinfulness before you can possibly realise the value and need of salvation. It is the business of the law to lay before you the straight line, so that you may see your crooks, and put before you the pure gold, that you may discern the humbling fact that what you thought to be pure metal is only so much worthless dross. It is the duty of this pedagogue to bring you down, to humble you, and make you feel how sinful you have been.
9. When the law has carried our education thus far, its next business is to sweep away all our excuses, and stop our mouths concerning all self-justifying pleas. Did you ever know a boy without an excuse? I never did. I think I never knew a girl either. We all make excuses readily enough. But those rough, surly pedagogues always answered the boy’s idle apologies by giving the offender an extra stroke of the whip for daring to impose upon his guardian; and that is what the law does with us. We say to it, “We have not done exactly as we ought, but then think of our poor human nature!” Ah! how often we make that excuse, and the law says, “I have nothing to do with the poverty of human nature. This is what God commands, and if you do not obey you will have to be cast away for ever from his presence.” The law makes no diminution of its claims because of fallen human nature; and what is more, when the law comes with power to a man’s conscience he does not himself dare to plead human nature, for of all pleas that is one of the most fallacious. A man will say, “Well, I know I drank to intoxication, but that is merely gratifying an instinct of human nature.” Now, just suppose that this drunkard when he gets sober falls into the hands of a thief, will he not give the rogue in charge to a policeman? But what if the defence is set up that it was human nature that robbed him? See what he will say about it. He says, “I will get human nature locked up for twelve months if I can.” He does not recognise soft speeches about human nature when anyone does wrong to him, and he knows, in his own soul, that there is no valid defence in such a plea when he does wrong against God. What if human nature is bad? That only proves that the man ought to be punished all the more. A man stands before my Lord Mayor tomorrow morning; he is brought up for a thief, charged with having picked someone’s pocket, and he says, “My Lord Mayor, I ought to be forgiven, for the fact is, it is my nature to steal. I have stolen so long that whenever I see a pocket I feel a disposition at once to put my hand into it; such is the infirmity of my nature.” What does the Lord Mayor say? He replies very gravely, “Why, I see that it is not merely in actions that you are guilty, but your very nature is poisoned with dishonesty. I shall give you a double punishment; your plea is no excuse, but an aggravation.” So when the law comes it sweeps all excuses away, and makes us see how hollow, false, and even wicked they are. Men, like boys, will say that circumstances were such that they could not help doing amiss; but the law, like a stern pedagogue, says, “I have nothing to do with circumstances. Whatever your circumstances are there is your duty, and you have not done it, and, not having done it, you must be punished for your offence.” Where does Moses, in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, speak about exonerating or even extenuating circumstances? God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them.” That is to say, not under any circumstances. “You shall not steal,” not under any circumstances. Circumstances are not taken into account, the law sweeps that excuse away, and makes men speechless before the judgment seat.
10. Many transgressors argue, “Well, but I have not done worse than other people”; to which the law replies, “What have you to do with other people? Each individual must stand or fall on his own account before the law. The law is for you. If another has broken it he shall be punished even as you shall, inasmuch as you have broken it.” Then the man cries, “But I have been better than others.” But, says the law, “If you have not perfectly walked in all the ways of the Lord your God to do them, I have nothing to do with comparing you with others: for this is my sentence, ‘Cursed is every man who does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.’ ” Now, my dear hearers, these are not my words, they are the words of God by his servant Moses, and there they stand like a flaming sword, turning every way, and blocking up the legal road to the tree of life. Conscience, when it is really awakened by the law, confesses herself condemned, and ceases to uphold her plea of innocence. How can it be otherwise when the law is so stern? Then, perhaps, the man will say, “I intend to do better in the future”; to which the law replies, “What have I to do with that? It is already due that you should be perfect in the future; and if you should be perfect, in what way would that wipe out your old offences? You have only done what you ought to have done.” But the man cries, “I do repent of having done wrong.” “Indeed,” says the law, “but I have nothing to do with repentance.” There is no provision in the ten commandments for repentance. Cursed is the man who breaks the law; and that is all that the law has to say to him. Over the top of Sinai there were flames exceedingly bright, and a trumpet sounded exceedingly loud, but there were no drops of the rain of pity there. Storm and tempest, thunderings and lightnings appalled the people, so that they trembled in the camp, and such must be the sights and sounds we witness as long as we are under the law.
11. Having thus swept away excuses, this pedagogue does the next thing which the pedagogues did to the boys. It begins to chide us and to chasten us. And it will chide too. I know it. I had the law frowning and shaking its fist at me for years before I got out from under it. I was glad enough to escape from it, for I remember well the weight of its club — that club of crab tree of which John Bunyan speaks. I warrant you it can give you sore bones, so that you cannot lie down upon the bed of your self-confidence to take rest. “Why,” says the law, “you have done this, and that, and the other, and you know you have; you have sinned against light, and against knowledge, and against conscience, and against love, and against mercy”; and every one of these brings another blow from the great club, until we are all wounds and bruises, and we seem to ourselves to be covered with putrefying sores. The law will serve us as the pedagogue did the boy — it will accompany and follow us everywhere. The old pedagogue went with the boy to the playground: he did not let him play in peace. He went upstairs to bed with him: he did not let him go to sleep without a last frown; and he woke him up in the morning much earlier than he liked to be awakened, and made him get out of his bed, whether he liked it or not. He could never go anywhere without this pedagogue with him, poor child. And so it is when the law gets hold of a man — really gets hold of him. Does he go to the theatre to find pleasure in sin? The law will go with him there and make him feel more wretched there than when he was at home. He may get among the frivolous, and try to sing some old song to get rid of his feelings, but the more he tries to drown his misery, the more the dark forebodings come before his mind. He cannot rest. The law keeps on saying, “What are you doing now? Why, you are only going from bad to worse.” The law also strikes the awakened conscience again and again, and frightens him with what is soon to come. “Suppose you were to die where you now are,” says the law; “suppose you were now to appear before your Maker, unforgiven, where would you be?” Perhaps in this kind of feeling a man goes to the house of God. The law follows him there. If the preacher preaches a comforting sermon, the law says, “This is not for you. You have nothing to do with that. You are under my government, not under Christ.” The sweeter the promise, the more bitter will be the taste of the sermon in the poor sinner’s mouth; for the law says, “You have broken my injunctions; you have violated my statutes. There is nothing for you but eternal punishment — to be driven for ever from the presence of God.” “Hard lines,” you say. You do not like this pedagogue. No, nor did I, when I was under him. I was glad when the day came that I was of age.
12. Do you see what the intent of it all is? Why, the intent of it is to make you despair of being saved by your good works, and to make you feel that you can do nothing right apart from Jesus. You are forced by the law to cry out, “Why, I cannot do anything right. I have tried and failed; I have tried again and have failed. I thought I was going to improve myself into an angel, but I seem to be worse every day. I thought surely the law would have smiled on me and said, ‘That is well done,’ but when I have done my best I am still condemned, I am allowed no peace.” No, dear soul, and if God intends to save you, you never will have any peace until you come to Christ. The man whom God does not intend to save is often left without the law, to enjoy his portion in this life as best he can. What is the use of worrying that man? He may as well have peace in this life, for he will never see the face of the Lord in heaven. But the Lord’s elect are made to feel the rod, and by that rod they are so beaten that they are driven out of all heart and confidence in themselves, and made to turn away to Jesus, to find salvation by some better method than by their own works. The law is our schoolmaster to whip us to Christ — our pedagogue to flog us and beat us until we are heartily sick of self, and look for our hope and confidence to some other source.
13. II. Thus I have shown you the function of the law, and I have encroached upon the second point, which is, THE INTENT OF THIS FUNCTION.
14. The law is not intended to conduct any man to despair. “But did not you say it was, just now?” No, I did not. I said it was sent to drive a man to despair of himself. That is the despair which hails the gospel, and the sooner we have it the better; it would be quite another matter if we were driven to despair absolutely.
15. Brethren, the law says, “You shall not indulge the hope of being saved by me. I will whip it out of you.” And it does this effectively, but it is not meant that the man should say, “Well, if I cannot be saved by my works there is no hope of my being saved at all.” Oh, no! it is so that he may then ask, “What must I do to be saved?” and may get this answer. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.”
16. Its function is not to urge us to make an amalgam of works and faith, as some suppose. There are those who say, “I cannot keep the law, but if I believe in Jesus, then the blood of Jesus will make up for my sins and deficiencies.” That is not the way of salvation. No one will ever get to heaven that way. If you have any engagements with the law, you must pay it twenty shillings in the pound. It will not take an amalgamation of any kind whatever, you must satisfy its utmost demands, or it will give you no rest, either in time or in eternity. If you say to the law, “I will give you so much in works and so much in grace,” the law does not deal in that way, it must be paid by a legal tender of current coin of the king’s realm. It demands works, and it will have nothing but works, and those absolutely perfect, and in full quota and measure. The law repudiates amalgamation, and so does the gospel of free grace. If you have anything to do with Jesus, you must get right away from your own good works; I mean from all reliance upon them, and come to rest in him, and him alone, for it never will be Christ and company. He will save from top to bottom, from first to last, or else not at all. Not a drop of his blood and then a drop of your tears; not a work from Christ and then a work from you. Oh no! Such hideous patchwork cannot be endured. It is not the object of the law to drive you to a compromise.
17. But its object is this — to make you accept salvation as the free gift of God — to make you stand and admit that you are a sinner, and accept a free, full, perfect forgiveness, according to the infinite grace of the eternal Father. The law is meant to keep you always holding on to salvation by grace. For my part, I cannot bear that preaching which is partly law and partly grace. I have had enough of the law. If you had known five years of its rigour — five years discipline of the pedagogue — you would never want to see even his back any more. When a man once knows what the work of the law is in his soul, he knows the difference between that and the gospel, and he will not have linsey woolsey: he needs to have the pure white linen all of one material, and that material free grace. It must not be “Yea, nay,” but “Yea, yea,” — grace, grace, all grace, nothing but grace, and not grace and works, not Moses and Christ, but Jesus only; the grace must be pure and unadulterated. It is a grand thing when this schoolmaster makes a man stick to grace, and so flogs and whips him that he never wants to go back to the law any more; for, brethren, no one is so happy in the liberty of Christ as the man who has thoroughly known the bondage of the law. I think I have repeated to you a story my old friend Dr. Alexander Fletcher once told me. He said he was passing by the Old Bailey, or some other of our jails, and he saw a couple of boys turning somersaults, standing on their heads, making cartwheels, and all kinds of things, and he stopped and said, “Why, boys, what are you doing? You seem to be delighted”; and one of them said, “Indeed, and you would be delighted too if you had been locked up in that jail for three months. You would jump when you came out.” And the good old doctor said, he thought it was very likely he should. If he had been a prisoner there, he should hardly know how to express his delight in getting out. Now, if a man has been once pommelled by the law, if he has felt his sin and misery, and the impossibility of obtaining any relief by the way of human merit, when he comes to see that Christ has kept the law for him, comes to know that he is saved, and saved perfectly by an act of faith in Jesus Christ, that henceforth he lives under new conditions, and is not under the law but under grace, he is the man to know the sweets of liberty, because previously the iron had entered into his soul. He is the man to kiss the emancipator’s feet, for was he not heavily ironed in the days of his former estate?
18. This, then, is the intent of the law — to make us sick of self and fond of Christ, to condemn us so that we may accept free grace, to empty us so that God may fill us, to strip us so that God may clothe us, in a word, to kill us so that Christ may make us alive.
19. III. Now for our last point, THE TERMINATION OF THE LAW’S FUNCTION. When does it terminate?
20. The text says, “But after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” We come to believe in Jesus, and then the pedagogue troubles us no more. No, there is a great change in his behaviour. When the young Roman, or we will say a young Hebrew, who had come under the Greek law, was under thirteen and a half years old, this pedagogue was always beating, and cuffing, and buffeting him for his faults; but when he was a day over the time, then, according to the law, he was free from the tutelage of the pedagogue. Do you think the pedagogue struck him that morning? He knew better. He had whipped him yesterday, but now he must know his master, and render him another kind of service. The lad is come to his full age, and is under other regulations. Under the old Roman law a man was not of full age until he was twenty-five. According to that law the pedagogue might be insulting and domineering over him when he was twenty-three or four; but when his young master had come of age he changed his tune altogether; matters wore another phase. And so when a man becomes a believer he has come of age, and the schoolmaster’s rule is over, he is no longer under his former tutors and governors, for his time of liberty appointed by the Father is come. He is not under the pedagogy of the law any longer, for Christ’s work has set him entirely free from it.
21. Certainly, a man sees the function of the law as pedagogue ended when he ascertains that Christ has fulfilled it. I read the ten commandments and say, “These thundered at me and I trembled at them, but Christ has kept them, kept them for me. He was my representative in every act of his obedient life and death, and before God it is as if I had kept the law, and I stand accepted in the Beloved.” When Jesus Christ is seen by God, God sees his people in him, and they are justified through his righteousness, because they have faith in him. “He who believes in him is not condemned.” Oh, is it not a thousand mercies in one that the grand old cannons of the law are no longer turned against us? Christ has either spiked them or else turned them on our enemies, by fulfilling the law, so that they are on our side instead of against us.
22. The law ceases its function as schoolmaster when it comes to be written on our hearts. Boys have their lessons on slates, but men have their laws in their minds. We trust a man where we should carefully watch a boy. When the child becomes a man his father and mother do not write down little rules for him, as they did when he was a child in knickers, neither do they appoint servants over him to keep him in order. He is trusted. His manliness is trusted; his honour is trusted, his best feelings are trusted. So now, brethren, we who have believed in Jesus have the law written here in our hearts, and it corresponds with what is written there in the Scriptures, and now we do not say concerning a sin, “I am afraid to do that, for I would be lost if I did.” We do not want to do it. We loathe it. And concerning a virtue we do not say, “I must do that, or else I shall not be a child of God.” No, we love to do it: we want to do it: the more of holiness the better. We love the law of the Lord and desire to keep its statutes to the end. We no longer have, “You shall” and “You shall not,” constantly sounding in our ears as we did when we were children; but we are men in Christ Jesus, and now our sacred passions delight to run in the way of God’s commandments; and if the old nature rebels grace is given to put it down: there is a daily conflict, but the new life that is within us cannot sin, because it is born of God, and it keeps down the old nature, so that we walk in the ways of righteousness after the example of our Lord. A warfare goes on, but we are no longer children; when faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. This is not Antinomianism, for we are not against the law, but the law that once was on the stony table, and there was broken, is now written on the fleshy tablet of a renewed heart, and the Lord sweetly inclines us to keep his testimonies and observe his statutes.
23. Moreover, we get free from
the law when we take up our heirship in Christ. I am
afraid some Christians have never fully done this. Can
you say, beloved, “I have believed in Jesus, and
therefore I am one with him. Whatever Christ is before
God I am that, for I am a member of his body, of his
flesh, and of his bones.
So near, so very near to God,
I cannot nearer be,
For in the person of his Son
I am as near as he.
So dear, so very dear to God,
I cannot dearer be,
The love wherewith he loves his Son,
Such is his love to me.”
Can you say, “He has made an everlasting covenant
with me, ordered in all things and sure? As long as
Jesus lives I cannot die, for it is written, ‘Because he
lives, I shall live also.’
My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase,
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace.”
When a man gets there, and knows that his standing does not depend on himself, but that he is what he is in Christ, that Christ has done everything for him, and has saved him, so that he can challenge every accuser in the words of Paul, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifies, who is he who condemns?” — when he gets there, then he can truly say that he is no longer under a schoolmaster. Oh brethren, read the eighth and ninth chapter of Romans. Get into the spirit of the apostle when he rejoiced and triumphed in the complete salvation of Christ: get away from all beliefs that you have something still to do in order to save yourself, get to know that you have only to work out what God works in; with fear and trembling to draw out from within, and show in your outward life, what God by the eternal Spirit works in your heart, and you will find that you are no longer under the law.
24. If there is any unconverted
person here, and I am afraid there are a great many, I
beseech you, do not remain under the law, for the law
can do nothing for you except curse you. Give up all
hope of being saved by anything that you can do, and
agree to be saved by what Christ has done. Plead guilty;
plead guilty, and then God will say, “I absolve you.”
Plead guilty, and plead the blood of Jesus, and, having
done this, you are accepted in the Beloved.
There is life for a look at the Crucified One;
There is life at this moment for thee,
for every soul that will confess its guiltiness, and renounce all hope of self-salvation, and flee away to the wounds of Jesus.
25. And how shall I urge you, oh Christian, never to go back to the law. Do not begin to judge yourself as if you were under the law. What if you are a sinner? It is true you are. Confess your sin and mourn over it; but remember there is a fountain open for sin and for uncleanness in the house of David. That sin of yours was laid on Christ before you committed it. It was laid on the scapegoat’s head of old, and put away; and at this moment you are still clean in the sight of God through that great washing which you have received in the precious blood. Do not imagine that God will change his mind about you; he never did and never can change his mind. He has said concerning each soul that believes in his dear Son, “He who believes in him is not condemned.” You are complete in Christ Jesus, in him you have righteousness and strength, in him you may even glory. Get away from legal doctrines, and stand upon the gospel rock, and you will be happy and holy all your days.
26. Let me speak to those of
you who are engaged in Christian service. When you try
to teach others always keep the law in its proper place.
I remember hearing a sermon from this text, “Those who
sow in tears shall reap in joy,” in which the preacher
so thoroughly missed the point as to leave the inference
upon the minds of his hearers that, after all, our good
works and repentance would save us. Now, that is not the
gospel; neither ought it to be preached as such. We
preach good works with all our might as the result of
faith, as the outgrowth of faith, but not as the
groundwork of salvation. We tell you that the tree
of human nature must be altered first, or the fruit
cannot be good. There will be no pears upon that crab
tree until you change the stem. Do not, therefore, go
preaching to crab trees and tell them to bear pears and
apples. We testify that Christ is able to change man’s
nature, and then good fruits will come as a matter of
course: but I am afraid that in many Sunday Schools the
children are taught a different doctrine, somewhat after
this manner. “Now, dear children, be very good, and obey
your parents, and love Jesus, and you will be saved.”
That is not the gospel, and it is not true. Often I hear
it said, “Love Jesus, dear children.” That is not
the gospel. It is “Trust him” — “Believe.” Not love, but
faith is the saving grace; and that love for Jesus of a
sentimental kind, which does not spring out of faith in
him is a spurious emotion, a counterfeit of love, not at
all the love of God, shed abroad in the heart by the
Holy Spirit. The root of the matter is, “Believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved”; and that is
the gospel for a child of two years of age, and the
gospel for a man of a hundred. There is only one gospel
for all who are born on the face of the earth — “Believe
in Jesus.” Not your doing, not your obeying the law; you
have broken that; you have put yourself beyond all
possible hope in that direction; but your acceptance of
what Christ has done will save you at once, save you for
ever. But why should I multiply words? I do not know how
to put the whole matter in a simpler form, or to commend
it more plainly to your understanding. It is not the
mere exposition of a few verses of Scripture, or the
clearing up of some small critical difficulty. Rather I
would have you consider it a direction of vital
importance to every seeking soul, a counsel of thrilling
interest to every tried and exercised heart. Oh, how
anxious I am to make straight paths for your feet, lest
what is lame is turned out of the way! I wish that all
of you, especially our young friends, would learn and
often repeat that hymn of Dr. Watts, until it becomes
indelibly fixed on their memory —
The law commands and makes us know
What duties to our God we owe;
But ’tis the gospel must reveal
Where lies our strength to do his will.
The law discovers guilt and sin,
And shows how vile our hearts have been;
Only the gospel can express
Forgiving love and cleansing grace.
What curses doth the law denounce
Against the man that sins but once!
But in the gospel Christ appears,
Pardoning the guilt of numerous years.
My soul, no more attempt to draw
Thy life and comfort from the law;
Fly to the hope the gospel gives,
The man that trusts the promise lives.
27. And remember, last of all,
that the law which is so sharp and terrible to men when
it only deals with them for their good, will if you and
I die without being brought to Christ be much more
terrible to us in eternity, when it deals with us in
justice for our punishment. Then it will not be
enshrined in the body of Moses, but, terrible to tell,
it will be incarnate in the person of the Son of God
sitting upon the throne. He will be at once the
Lawgiver, the Judge, and the Saviour; and you who have
despised him as the Saviour will have to appear before
him as your Judge. No such judge as he, his justice will
be clear and undiluted now that his mercy has been
scorned. Oil is soft, but set it on fire, and see how it
burns! Love is sweet, but curdle it to jealousy, and see
how sour it is! If you turn the Lamb of Zion into the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, beware, for he will tear you
in pieces, and there shall be no one to deliver you.
Rejected love will change its hand. The pierced hand was
outstretched with invitations of mercy, but if these are
rejected — oh sirs, I am telling you solemn truth, and
hear it, I urge you, before I send you away — if from
that hand that was pierced you will not take the perfect
salvation which he is prepared to give to all who
confess their guilt, you will have to receive from that
very same hand the blows of that iron rod which shall
break you in pieces as a potter’s vessel. Flee now, and
kiss the Son, lest he is angry, and you perish from the
way while his wrath is kindled only a little. Blessed
are all those who put their trust in him! Amen.
[Portion Of Scripture Read Before Sermon — Ga 4]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “Gospel, Received by Faith — Jesus
Pleads For Me” 567]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “The Christian, Desires After
Holiness — Love Constraining To Obedience” 647]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “Gospel, Received by Faith — ‘We
Have Peace With God’ ” 565]
[See Spurgeon_Sermons No 3564. “Publications” 3566 @@
"Sermon No. 1196"]
Gospel, Received by Faith
567 — Jesus Pleads For Me
1 Before the throne of God above
I have a strong, a perfect plea;
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
2 My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that, while in heaven he stands,
No tongue can bid me thence depart.
3 When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
4 Because the sinless Saviour died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on him, and pardon me.
5 Behold him there! the bleeding Lamb!
My perfect, spotless Righteousness,
The great unchangeable, “I AM,”
The King of glory and of grace.
6 One with himself, I cannot die,
My soul is purchased by his blood;
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Saviour and my God.
Charitie Lees Smith, 1863.
The Christian, Desires After Holiness
647 — Love Constraining To Obedience
1 No strength of nature can suffice
To serve the Lord aright;
And what she has she misapplies,
For want of clearer light.
2 How long beneath the law I lay
I bondage and distress!
I toil’d the precept to obey,
But toil’d without success.
3 Then, to abstain from outward sin,
Was more than I could do:
Now, if I feel its power within,
I feel I hate it too.
4 Then all my servile works were done
A righteousness to raise;
Now, freely chosen in the Son,
I freely choose his ways.
5 What shall I do, was then the word,
That I may worthier grow?
What shall I render to the Lord?
Is my inquiry now.
6 To see the law by Christ fulfill’d
And hear his pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.
William Cowper, 1779.
Gospel, Received by Faith
565 — “We Have Peace With God”
1 In Christ I have believed,
And through the spotless Lamb
Grace and salvation have received;
In him complete I am.
2 This hope divine uplifts
My soul amid distress;
“Without repentance” are his gifts
Who thus vouchsafes to bless.
3 My sins, my crimson stains,
Are blotted out, each one;
No condemnation now remains!
God views me in his Son.
4 Then come what may to me,
It will, it must be blest!
Home in the distance I can see;
There I shall be at rest.
Charlotte Elliott, 1854.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2013/05/30/stern-pedagogue