From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The words to which I would like to call your attention this evening are to be found in that 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans that we read at the beginning, reading again verses 8, 9, and 10. Verses 8, 9, and 10 in the 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

Now, here this evening, we come to a new subsection in this 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It's not only a new subsection of this chapter; it is a new subsection of the two chapters, 12 and 13. Let me remind you again that in this whole section of the Epistle from the beginning of the 12th chapter right to the end, the Apostle is working out the practical application of the doctrine and the teaching that he had been laying down in the previous chapters.

In these two chapters, 12 and 13, he is particularly concerned about the Christian in his relationship to other people: first of all, to other Christians, and then to people in general. And as we've been seeing in the first seven verses, he has taken this up in terms of the relationship of the Christian to the state and the various ramifications and implications of it. Now he's still going on with that same general theme, and it's very important that we should remember that.

So I'm describing these three verses as a subsection, not only in this chapter but in the two chapters 12 and 13. Now, it's very important that I should say that for this reason: my interpretation of these three verses is that here the Apostle is rounding off, as it were, what he has been saying really from the third verse of the 12th chapter. Verses one and two of chapter 12, you remember, are a general introduction to the whole section to the end of the Epistle.

But he takes up this theme of our relationship to others in the church and in the world and so on from the third verse of the 12th chapter. He's worked it out in various ways in detail as we've been seeing, and here, I am suggesting, he's now winding up all that he's been saying in this connection. So that these three verses are not only a conclusion to the immediately preceding section, namely verses 1 to 7, they are further a winding up and a conclusion and a summarizing of the teaching that he has been giving us right the way through, through most of the 12th chapter as well as this 13th chapter as well.

Now, what he's doing here is this: he's worked it out in various details, but now he says it's very important that you should have all this in your minds in a right perspective. So he puts all the details he's been referring to into a general setting and shows us how the Christian should really regard these various duties to which he has been referring. Now again, I must point out how typical and characteristic this is of the Apostle's own method.

He was a most methodical thinker, and he generally does things in the same way. That's a sign of a methodical teacher. He has a fundamental way of thinking. Every man has who thinks at all in an orderly manner. There is a style in one's method of thinking as there is a style in one's method of speaking or in one's method of writing. But it's always fascinating to me to notice the characteristic style or manner of this great Apostle.

In other words, he never fails to gather together always at the end what he's been saying. This is something I've often illustrated to you by comparing him in this matter to somebody like Beethoven, who has his kind of introduction and then introduces his themes, then takes the individual themes and works them out, but always at the end, gathers them up again and shows the wholeness and the completeness. Now, the great Apostle is doing that here. And this is of interest not merely as it is an indication of the way in which his mind worked, but also it is something which is of very great value to all of us and of very great importance as we face the duties of the Christian life.

Now, I'm sure that there is nobody in any trouble with regard to what I've just been saying. I hope there's nobody who feels that in saying what I've just been saying, I've been denying the doctrine of the inspiration of the scriptures. I haven't. The doctrine of the inspiration of the scriptures does not mean and doesn't say and doesn't teach that the writers were just passive, or that the inspiration of the scriptures means a passive dictation. It doesn't mean that. Inspiration is a very active process.

Inspiration makes use of the different natural faculties and powers of the writers whom God has chosen. That is why you can detect the style of the Apostle Paul and see the obvious contrast to the style of the Apostle John, and both of them in turn by way of contrast with the Apostle Peter. God uses the men whom He's already endowed with certain faculties. Inspiration means this: that God so controls the man and his faculties as to give them the message He wants them to transmit, and also to safeguard that they do so without any error.

But that is compatible with variations in style. And that is what is so wonderful about the scripture. You know that the truth has all come from the Spirit, and He has guided infallibly all the writers. But there is this variety because He does it in such a way as not to negate the natural faculties of people, but rather to use them. It is an enhancing and a controlling of the natural faculties, not a mechanical dictation. If it were mechanical dictation, well then, there'd be none of these differences in style. But here, I say we are struck by it, and one therefore cannot but express one's admiration at the particular type of mind and of thinking that characterized this great and mighty Apostle.

Now then, let's watch him and see what he's doing. He starts off by saying, "Owe no man anything, but to love one another." What makes him say this at this point? Well, what he does, of course, is he takes up something that he'd just said in the previous verse. That is generally how he passes from one subsection to another. As it were at the end of the previous subsection, he throws out a hint, then he takes that hint up and goes on with it. Again, think of the analogy of the musician; this is quite typical of many of them. They will have been working out a theme; just as they're coming to the end of it, they throw out a new idea. Then that's going to be the main theme or leitmotif of the next section. It's picked up and worked out. That's exactly what the Apostle does.

Now let me show you this. There, you remember in verse 7, we read this: "Render therefore to all their dues." Now he takes up that phrase and he puts it here in terms of "Owe no man anything." And in the Greek, you've got exactly the same word for "dues" in chapter 7 as you have for "owe" in chapter 8—the noun there and the verb here, but the same essential word. As if he'd said in verse 7, "Render therefore unto all all that is owing." That's exactly what it means.

And here he says, "Owe no man anything, but to love one another." As if to say, "Now, I've been talking about what you owe to others, and that you are to do this in every way: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. But the principle is whatever is owing to others, let them have it." So here now he takes that up, and all he does is to put in a negative form what he's previously put in a positive form. "Render unto all their dues. Pay to all what is owing to them." Here: "Owe no man anything. Don't owe any man anything." It's simply the negative way of putting what he'd there put in the positive form.

In other words, he's really saying, "Let all men have that which is owing to them. Discharge your obligations to all men. Never be behind in that respect." But the question is: what does he mean by this? There are some who have argued that this is a plain bit of teaching to the effect that you should never have a loan, that you should never have a mortgage, for instance. A mortgage is a loan. And if you've got a mortgage on your house, well you owe that money to the people who've given you this mortgage, this loan, in order that you might buy your house or hire purchase or anything like that. And they say that this is an indication that a Christian is never to borrow money. He's never to owe anybody anything at all, so out goes all questions of loans.

Well now, there is no need to waste any time over this. It can't mean that for this reason: that we are instructed in the scripture elsewhere to give loans. The question of usury is taken up, the question of interest and so on is taken up in the Old Testament as well as in the New. So there's no prohibition on that. That isn't what it means at all. But what it does mean is this: that we must never be careless in this matter of borrowing and lending.

And the moment you stop to think of that, you see what an important injunction it is. How much harm has been done to individuals and in the life of the Christian church so often through people being negligent about this matter. It happens not only with regard to money, but with books—borrowing books, borrowing various other things. You suddenly want something and you go to some friend or relative or somebody and you ask if you may borrow such and such a thing, and they give it to you. Then very often, instead of returning this as you should do, you keep it and you hold on to it. And they ask you; you say, "Oh yes, I'll let you have it back," but then you don't let them have it back.

Now, I needn't keep you over this. It's almost a proverb, isn't it, that it's a very foolish thing to lend to members of your own family, let alone anybody else. It's the source of greater quarreling and unhappiness probably than anything else at all. We all must have experienced this many times. It's a very grievous fault; it's something which is very wrong not to repay that which you've borrowed, that which you owe as soon as you can. It's wrong to be negligent, it's wrong to be slack, it's wrong to be indolent, because you'll soon work yourself into a position to say, "Why is this person bothering me so much? Why making such a fuss about this thing?" You've no right to say that. It doesn't belong to you, and it's your business to return this thing.

Now, the Apostle is saying that: "Owe no man anything" in that sense. A legal loan done properly, that's all right as long as you observe the terms. But there is nothing that causes so much trouble, I say, and unhappiness and even quarreling than this very thing. As I say, it's almost become a proverb that if you want to maintain the friendship of a person, well don't borrow from them and don't give them a loan. There has been nothing that's been so prolific in upsetting friendships and relationships as just this very thing. Well, it was obviously the same in the early church as it still is. So the Apostle takes this up and says that we must never be guilty in that respect. We must be ultra-careful and scrupulous in this matter. The world isn't. We are unlike the world. Well, let's show that we're unlike the world. And this is one of the ways in which we do that: that we go out of our way to be careful about these things. And if some of us are naturally absent-minded or forgetful, well then buy a notebook and put it down in it, and put it in your diary and do everything you can to make sure that you don't cause trouble to others in this particular respect.

The Apostle is concerned about things like that because they do upset the Christian life, and they are very bad witness and testimony very often to those who are watching from the outside. But, of course, it goes beyond that. It doesn't stop at that. That's the immediate practical thing, but he enlarges this, puts it into a bigger setting. He says not only in this particular matter, but in all your relationships, pay your dues. Don't owe any man anything. Be clear about this. He goes beyond the advice of Polonius: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." He says you've got an obligation to all men. Discharge it to the full.

Now, I always feel that the best commentary on this is really something the Apostle has already written earlier in the Epistle. And to my amazement and real interest, I can't find a single commentator who has seen this and refers to it. So I call your attention to it. It is, of course, what he has said away back in the very first chapter in the 14th verse. He's talking about his longing to visit them at Rome and how he'd intended to do this many times but he'd been hindered hitherto, he says in the 13th verse. Then in the 14th verse he says, "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise." And the word translated "debtor" there is exactly this word here which we've already had in the seventh verse and now have again in this eighth verse.

And I think that he means exactly the same thing here as he meant there. "I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise." I owe this to all people, whatever their culture may chance to be. But what does he mean by this? Well now, I remember years ago in dealing with that 14th verse of the first chapter, putting it I think like this to you. There was a famous preacher who lived and flourished roughly 130 years ago in Brighton, F.W. Robertson of Brighton, who has tended to control people's exposition of Romans 1:14. He preached a famous sermon on this, and he put it like this: that what the Apostle meant was, he said, "Well, now, I have gained a great deal from Greek culture. I'm very indebted to Greek culture. I've enjoyed reading the Greek poets," for he obviously had, he gives proof of that in his visit to Athens.

He's saying in effect, they say, "Well, I've received a great deal from Greek philosophy and Greek art and sculpture and culture in general. I've received a great deal from Rome and her legal system and her outlook. But I must say I've also received a great deal from the barbarians—not in the same way, of course, but I've received much help and much kindness from them. And so, having received so much from them, I feel I must try to pay back and to show my gratitude for what I have received."

Now, I reject that interpretation of this totally, as entirely missing the mark and indeed detracting from the glory of what the Apostle is saying. What he's saying is this: not that he just wants to pay them back like that. He's saying something much more wonderful. He's saying as a Christian, and since I've become a Christian, I feel that I've got something which other people need. And I feel it so much that I really feel as if I were in debt. He's not actually in debt in the sense that Robertson puts it or in the sense that some people have misinterpreted this.

What he means is that having this wonderful possession himself, when he sees the need of others, he feels it so strongly that he feels he has no right not to give it. He feels as if they've got a claim on him, as it were, and can make a demand of him. That was why he preached. You see, you take that context in that first chapter: "I long to be with you in Rome that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift that you may be established." And then comes this great statement: "I am a debtor." I've got this, I can impart spiritual gifts. I'm an apostle; I've been endowed in this way. And I feel that you've got a claim on me.

Let me sum it up by using the illustration that I think I used on that occasion, which to me puts it so well. A man discovered in an ancient document in Egypt in the early part of this present century, in one of these old papyri as they're called, he found in that old bit of paper and writing that had come down from the first century, he found that the word which is translated as "power" in the 16th verse of the first chapter of this Epistle—you remember, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth"—he found that the word in the Greek which we translate now as "power" was also the word that was then used for what we now call a "prescription." "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the prescription of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth."

Well now, I think that helps us to interpret what Paul means here by this word "debtor." "I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise." So I venture to put it like this. He's saying something like this: he says, "This is how I feel as a Christian. I'm like a man who once upon a time suffered from a disease which was very painful and very crippling. Let's take as an example arthritis, some disease of the joints. Terrible pains, and in the end, he could scarcely move."

Well, of course, he went to his doctor, and his doctor did his best for him but he was no better. Sent to a consultant; he did his best. No better. Tried them all. No better. And then he heard of various other spas and so on; he's tried them all. No good. But at last, somebody tells him of some wonderful physician somewhere on the continent who gets wonderful results with this very complaint. So this man goes to see this man, and this doctor on the continent took a look at him and said, "Ah yes, I know exactly what this is, and I can put you right." So he sat down at his desk and he wrote out a prescription. And he said, "Now you go and get that, and you take that. You'll get rid of your pain, and after a while, your joints will become loose and supple again, and you'll be perfectly well."

Well, this man did this, and indeed, as he was told by the physician, the pain went and soon his joints began to loosen and he's been perfectly well ever since. Now, this is how he feels. He walks up and down the streets of life, and one afternoon as he's walking down the street, he sees a poor man on the other side of the street. He doesn't know the man, never seen him before, but at a glance, he can tell that that man is suffering from his old complaint. He can tell by the way he's holding himself, by the way he's shuffling along, the pain in his face as he makes movements.

He knows that that man has got his old complaint. But he knows something more: that man obviously has never heard of this prescription, which he's actually got in his pocket. He's carried it about ever since. He's got in his pocket a certain cure, and that poor man obviously knows nothing at all about it. What does he do? Well, there's no hesitation. There's only one thing to do: he's got to cross the road. He's got to accost that man and say to him, "Excuse me, sir. You don't know me and I don't know you, but I do know what's the matter with you. Tell me, have you ever heard of this?" producing his prescription.

Do you see, says Paul? If he didn't do that, he'd be a cad. He's got a certain cure which he can hand over to that man. That man's got a right to it; he's got a claim on him. He feels he's a debtor to that man. He doesn't know him, he's never received anything from him at all, but he's got this thing and the man needs it. And he feels this pressure: he's a debtor to him. He must tell him about this prescription. Now, that is surely the explanation of Romans 1:14: "I am a debtor."

I feel that everybody who's suffering from this terrible disease called sin has got a claim upon me. I owe it to them to tell them, and I must tell them. That's what he means by "debtor" in the 14th verse of the first chapter. I suggest he means exactly the same here. We are debtors to men in this way. We owe them this, over and over and above actual debts which we incur and which we must pay. Beyond that, there is this sense of debt to all men. Now then, that I think is essential as an exposition here because it is the only exposition that leads on to the next statement: "Owe no man anything, but to love one another."

Now what he's saying, you see, is this: discharge all your debts to the utmost of your capacity and power. But there is one respect in which you'll never be able to do so fully. What's that? And that is in your love for other people. This is a perpetual obligation, this is a perpetual debt. So I agree with those who would suggest that this should be translated "Owe no man anything except to love one another." Except to love one another.

So you see, he's enlarging it in the way that I've been showing you. And this very word "debt," "debtor," and so on leads to it quite naturally. He's obviously moved by the same thinking as he had away back in the first chapter. And here he's saying, "Remember that you're a debtor to all men always in this particular respect of loving them." Not in the matter of money, not in the matter of books or whatever else you borrow. No, no. But in this matter, you are always in debt. This is the great exception, as it were. "Owe no man anything" except this debt and obligation of loving one another.

Then, you see, he takes this up and he expands it and he works it out in the way that I was suggesting to you at the beginning. Now let's follow him; let's see how his mind works, let's follow him in his argument. What he's really saying to them is this. He's been giving them a whole series of details about what they must do and not do. Now he's saying here to them, "Always remember that all these matters are a part of God's law and a part of God's commandment." You see, the full statement is this: "Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." All these, you see to the Apostle and his way of thinking, they all belong together. And that is the link, the way in which he moves from one to another.

He says all these things are a part of God's law, a part of God's commandment. And we've got to realize this in all our relationships. Now, in the case of the state, as we've been seeing at great length, he's made a very great point of this. He says, "Look here, here is this question of your relationship to the powers that be, to these higher powers. Why should a Christian be subject to these higher powers? Why should a Christian observe the laws of the country to which he belongs?" There's only one answer: "There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God."

Now, there he's put it quite explicitly. It is a part of God's holy law to us, all mankind in fact, that we should be subject to the higher powers. And he's here reminding us that all these other injunctions are in exactly the same way God's law for us, God's law for life. This is how God would have us all live in our relationships with one another. In other words, these things are not matters of personal opinion. It's not a question of personal opinion; it is a question of God's holy law. Now, we've seen that in dealing with the question of the state, and this whole question of civil obedience and so on, it all comes under this heading: God has expressed His will and His commandment concerning this particular matter and others. And the Apostle's argument is here that God has done this with regard to all these questions.

So, we don't talk about our own personal opinions and predilections; that isn't what matters. As God has made all this explicit and plain and clear in His laws, we in our conduct and our behavior ought to be governed by these rules. But now, and here is the fascinating thing at this point, having laid it down that these matters are a part of God's law, he then points out to us the vital importance of understanding clearly the nature of God's law. And this is what he takes up. Now this is a most important statement that we have here. Here it is, you see, in just one phrase: "He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." Then in verse 9 he expands this: "For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet," and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And then the final statement of it: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

Now, what he's concerned here with them is that we should be clear in our understanding of the nature of God's law. And in doing this, the Apostle is simply doing what our blessed Lord and Savior did Himself in the Sermon on the Mount. The section of the Sermon on the Mount which is to be found in the fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel beginning about verse 17 and going right the way through to the end is exactly the very thing that the Apostle is stating in a summary form and manner here. Our Lord is addressing the Pharisees in particular on the true understanding of God's law. He's showing them the nature of the law. And here the Apostle does it in this way.

In other words, he shows the relationship between law and love. You see, we tend to put these things up as opposites: law and love. It's one of the great troubles of life today that people don't like law. They contrast it with love, and they mean by love lawlessness, license, lust. That's the whole confusion in modern thinking. What the Apostle does here is to show us this intimate relationship between law and love. And if a man hasn't grasped this, he's completely misunderstood the whole nature and the whole purpose of the law.

So we can put it like this negatively: that we are always to be concerned not merely with the letter of the law, but with the spirit of the law. You see: "Owe no man anything." He's been dealing with details. "But to love one another." For why? Well, why? Why does he talk about love? Well, he says, "He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." This is a matter of law, yes. But it's the man who loves is the man who has really filled out, carried out fully, the law.

So we must never think only of the letter of the law. There's something infinitely more important, and that is the spirit. Now Paul was very fond of saying this. You'll find him saying in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 6, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Here is this great contrast. You'll find it in the Epistle to the Galatians and in other places. It's all here. He says, "I've been giving you all these details." Now he says, "God forbid that you should just stop at the letter of what I've been saying. It's the spirit that matters." So he brings in the whole element of love.

Or another way we can put it is this: we must always remember that the law is not meant to be mechanical; it's meant to be living. That's another most important distinction. We're not meant to keep the law mechanically—you know, one, two, three, tick them off. You've missed the whole point. It's a living matter; it's a life matter. It's not a matter of mere rules and regulations. It's got to be intelligent. Now we've seen this phrase, you remember, in the first verse of chapter 12: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Intelligent, spiritual, thoughtful, not mechanical. That's exactly the distinction you remember we saw there. He's repeating that here. It's got to be intelligent; it's got to be spiritual, not mechanical.

Then another important way of looking at that is this: we must never consider the law as a mere collection of a number of separate details. We must always bear in mind the wholeness, the completeness, the personal element in it all. The law's not just a man sitting down, as it were, and saying, "Well, yes, tell them not to do this." And think again, "Tell them not to do that." It isn't that. Not disconnected items just bundled together. No, no. There is a wholeness and a completeness, and each individual injunction is a part and an inevitable part of a greater whole—not a mere collection of parts.

And lastly, we can put it like this: that we must never conceive of the law and its function in a negative manner, but always in a positive manner. The law finally is not just something that tells us what not to do. It does tell us what not to do, but its object in telling us what not to do is really to tell us what we should do. The negative always leads to a positive. The intent of the law is always positive. A man is not to be a mere collection of negations or vetoes or prohibitions or restraints. He's to be positive. Now there are the negatives. So I put it positively like this: that all the particular details of the law which he's been expanding in these two chapters, we're to realize always that these are but particular expressions of a general attitude to our neighbor, which is to be one of love.

Now, let me show you the perfection of the Apostle's thinking. I remember taking a good deal of time when we were doing chapter 12 in expanding to you verses 9 and 10 and telling you how verses 9 and 10 were going to control everything that followed. Here they are: "Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another." I said, "Now, those are the controlling principles of all the details that are going to follow." And here, you see, having given us all the details, he comes back to it. "Let love be without dissimulation. Love is the fulfillment of the law" and so on. So we must remember then that these details are but expressions of this total attitude that as Christians we take towards all other people, and it is always an attitude of love.

Now, that is what the Apostle is saying here, and it's very important that we should grasp this. Now, people get into trouble even at this point. We are always ready to go off at tangents, aren't we? And one of the tangents that people go off at at once, the moment they hear the kind of thing I've just been saying, which is an exposition of what Paul is saying here, they tend to say, "Ah, very well then. Now then, as long as we love, therefore, we needn't bother about these details. Paul says, 'He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. Love is the fulfilling of the law.' Well, I don't need to bother about all his details therefore, and I don't see why you've been spending all these Friday evenings on all these details. As long as we love, all is well."

And that's exactly what people are trying to say at the present time, isn't it? They don't like the details of the law. "We believe in love," they say. "We don't want all this instruction." They put up love, as I'm saying, against the detailed instructions of the law. But that is proved to be wrong by the fact that the Apostle takes the trouble to give us all the details as well as the general statement about love. You see, what he's concerned about here is this: he isn't saying that love has replaced the detailed injunctions of the law. He says no, that isn't the case at all.

What he is saying is this: that we must never imagine that to be mechanically right at certain points puts us right as a whole. That's what he's saying. He's arguing here and demonstrating against this fatal tendency to say that as long as I don't do this and I don't do that, that I'm perfect. His whole point is that you can be negatively right and almost perfect and yet be all wrong, because this is something which is finally completely positive.

Now, another way that I could put this, therefore, is this: you remember James's argument about faith and works. And James sums it up by putting it like this: "Therefore, faith without works is dead." Some people say, "Ah, but look at my faith! I've got faith. I don't worry about these details." And the other man goes to the other extreme, and he's always showing you his works, you see, and he hasn't got faith. Well, what James is saying is what Paul always says: that both are wrong. Faith and works are indissolubly linked together.

And so it is equally true to say about love and law. As faith without works is dead, so love which does not manifest itself in a detailed observation and carrying out of the law is nothing but sheer sentimentality and ceases to be true love. Love is something orderly, love is lawful, legal. "Love is the fulfillment of the law." These two things, he says, are indissolubly bound together, and we must never be guilty of divorcing them or separating them from one another.

So we need the detailed injunctions as well as the general reminder about the character of loving. We need the details in order to check us, in order to remind us, and in order to help us. It is a part of God's love to us to tell us what to do in detail. That is His way of teaching us and training us, as we all do with our children. We have discovered all of us it's not enough to tell the little child, "Now go and be a good boy." If you just leave it at that, well, you provoke disaster. You've got to tell him what he mustn't do in detail. You must let him know what a good boy is. And that's exactly what God does with us in the law. It's not mechanical, it's not legalistic. This is a manifestation of love. It's love teaching the child. So it's love that gives us the details. We must never divorce these things. The whole and the parts are one in an organic sense and not in a mechanical sense.

Now, to finish this matter for this evening, you see the importance of all this. It was just at this point that the Pharisees had gone so hopelessly astray in the time when our blessed Lord was here on Earth. That was exactly the error of the Pharisees. They were the people who were interested in law. They were the teachers of the law, instructors in the law. They were always talking about the law; they were proud of the law. They gloried in the fact that they as a people and as a nation were the only people who had received God's law.

But they'd completely misunderstood the whole point of the law. How often did our Lord have to tell them this? "You tithe mint and rue and anise and cummin, and neglect the weightier matters of the law and the love of God." That was their whole tragedy: that they'd reduced God's holy law, which is a law of love, to a number of legalisms. And there they'd got them categorized and had given them numbers, and they were arguing about them and were experts on details and minutiae and were missing the whole point. That's the whole function of the Sermon on the Mount, as I say, to remind them of that.

And our Lord goes on repeating it in all the altercations with the Pharisees and scribes and doctors of the law. He was always making exactly that one point. They've never understood the real function of the law, which is not to produce mere negations, mere moralists in a negative sense, but to produce positive personalities filled with the love of God who will show this love in their daily life and conduct and behavior.

Well, there's one reason for emphasizing all this. It was the whole trouble in the days when our Lord was here in the flesh in this world. It was because of their misunderstanding of law that they finally put our Lord to death. They thought He was a blasphemer; they said so. It was entirely due to their complete failure to see this spiritual, loving element in the law. And as it was true then, it is true today. And this is the final condemnation which we as Christians should always bring against moralists—these modern humanists and others. Many of them are moral people; some of them are not even moral, but some of them are.

But this is the final failure of your moralist: he's always negative; he's never positive. He doesn't do certain things; he may live a good life. He's a paragon of all the virtues, but he's cold, he's intellectual only, he's hard. He's not the sort of man you go to if you're in trouble. The poor sinner never goes near to him. The sinners never drew nigh unto the Pharisees and scribes, but we read about our blessed Lord then drew publicans and sinners nigh unto Him. The people who'd fallen and had failed in life, they felt drawn to Him. They felt He'd got something to give, that He in this sense was a debtor to them and He'd got it ready to give to them. Never so with your moralist.

The moralist is self-contained; he can't help anybody else. He's entirely negative. He's a mere collection of vetoes and restraints, prohibitions. The whole position of morality is negative. And of course, not only that, morality by its very nature is more concerned in actions than in persons. And that is why morality in a sense always insults us. Moral teaching never produces men. It never produces full, rounded, positive, loving personalities. It can't do it.

And that is why we should always be ready to counter mere moral teaching when it offers itself as a substitute for the Christian faith. It finally is an insult to the human personality because it's more interested in what I do than in what I am. But the glory of this is that it is interested in me as a person more than in my actions. And it isn't content that I should be mechanically or merely negatively moral and ethically correct. It wants to bring me to this place where I am a full personality manifesting something of the love of God and of Christ in my personal life.

Very well, all that you see he puts in these words: "Owe no man anything, except to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." This wonderful synthesis of everything that is true of God in all His ways and in all His dealings with us. Well, God willing, we shall continue this theme next Friday night. Let us pray.

O Lord our God, we come to Thee simply to express our sense of wonder and amazement and admiration at the glory of Thy ways. O Lord, Thy Word has told us that Thy thoughts are not our thoughts, nor Thy ways our ways, and we not only see that, we thank Thee for it. We thank Thee how Thy way makes our ways look so small even at their best; how mechanical we see them to be, how legalistic, how lacking in life, how lacking in fullness. O God, we thank Thee for Thy way, Thy way of love expressing itself in so many different ways, but all an expression of Thy love toward us, Thy holy love, Thy love even as it expresses itself in law.

O God, open our eyes we pray Thee more and more to the glory of these things and above all make us such by Thy Spirit that we shall exemplify them and illustrate them day by day in our dealings with others, in our mixing with men and women, in our home life, family life, in all our relationships. O grant that in and through us something of Thy great and eternal love and that of Thy dear Son and the Holy Spirit may be seen and manifest in us and through us. Hear us, O Lord, and now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night and evermore. Amen.