From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: We continue our study of verses 8, 9, and 10 in the 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Verses 8, 9, and 10 in the 13th chapter: "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."

We've been expounding the connection of this with what's gone before, and our suggestion is that the Apostle is summing up here all these various injunctions that he's been giving us from the beginning of the 12th chapter. He's gone into details, but he's summing it up again and he's enforcing, as he did even as he introduced the subject, this great principle of love. What we're doing at the moment is this: we're dealing with this statement in the ninth verse where the Apostle says that all the commandments are briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." We've seen that that's a quotation from the book of Leviticus, that it was something that was repeated more than once by our blessed Lord and Savior and by this Apostle and by James in their teaching. So it is a very important statement.

We're looking at it from this angle: that it is a most important statement at this present time. Let me explain what I mean by that. The Scriptures are always fundamentally of exactly the same importance. It is a part of our preaching of the Scripture to go on repeating that, unlike those who don't regard these Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and who therefore tend to say that it changes and that its message changes and must indeed change from age to age and generation to generation according to scientific discovery and the advance of knowledge. We say that the truth, being God's truth and once and for all given, is always the same and speaks to each generation of men in exactly the same way.

That is our fundamental proposition. But while we assert that, we also of course must be equally careful, it seems to me, to point out this: that it is the business of the preacher and the teacher to show the particular relevance of this one unchanging message to each particular age and generation. So it comes to pass, as you look at the long history of the church, you will find that particular aspects of the teaching of this one unchangeable and unchanging truth, particular aspects in particular eras and epochs, have had an unusual and an exceptional significance.

Obvious example, of course, is the doctrine of justification by faith at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Equally in the 18th century, the doctrine of regeneration was the thing that received special emphasis by all the various divisions amongst the Methodists. This is an important principle. In other words, we must always remember that it is a part of the preaching of the gospel not only to give the whole message, the unchanging message, but it is to point it and to emphasize it in terms of the particular situation in which we may find ourselves.

If we don't do this, we shall be failing as preachers and teachers or as people talking to others about the Christian faith. It is a part of evangelism. The Apostle lays this down, of course, once and for all in 1 Corinthians 9, when he speaks to a Jew, he speaks to him as a Jew; when he speaks to a Gentile, he speaks to him as a Gentile; to a man under the law, as under the law; to a man who's not under the law, as not under the law. This is a most important point. The same message, but he points it and applies it and shows the relevance of it in differing ways according to these differing circumstances.

If we don't do this, we're falling into a very grievous mistake. I've known men who, having read the Puritans, have preached in this century exactly as if they belonged to the 17th century, even in the matter of manner and expression and so on. There's only one thing to say about that kind of thing: that is pathetic. It's not only failure; it is pathetic failure. We are to show how certain aspects of truth have an unusual importance at given points in the history of mankind. It's particularly true with regard to this matter that we're now dealing with.

I tried to show you that last Friday night. All this modern talk that our quest now is not for the gracious God, it's for the gracious neighbor. If you want to be really up to date in the modern clichés, that's what you've got to say. Man is what counts now, the neighbor. The great thing is to love your neighbor, find your gracious neighbor, and so on. I put it to you in terms of what I once heard as having been said by a Lord Provost of Glasgow, and then I quoted to you that famous old poem of Leigh Hunt about Abou Ben Adhem.

Here is a teaching which we really must be quite clear about. People have misunderstood the very words that we are studying as meaning this: that if you do love your neighbor, you needn't worry about your love of God, you're doing so automatically, and that the way to love God is to love your neighbor. Abou Ben Adhem came down top of the list because he loved his fellow men. Now this is a very specious and subtle teaching, and it is of the most vital importance that we should be clear about it.

So we've started giving answers to that wrong teaching, and we've shown that it's simply to reverse what the law itself says. The law puts the first table before the second. This teaching puts the second before the first. It is to reverse our Lord's own teaching. He was always careful to put them in the same order as the law does. Not only that, we showed that it misses the real greatness of the content of this word "love" in the New Testament, which is a very profound word, necessitating Paul to write 1 Corinthians 13. It's a new concept altogether, but they don't seem to grasp that. Their idea of love is sentimental.

Then we showed that it was heresy because if you think the natural man can love his neighbor, you're guilty of sheer heresy. It's the one thing he cannot do. He can be moral, but he can never love his neighbor as himself. Why not? The fundamental reason we saw was that the man who is unregenerate hasn't a true view of himself. So he cannot fulfill this law which tells him to love his neighbor as himself. He's got a wrong view of himself, he's got a wrong view of his neighbor; therefore, he's entirely incapable of keeping the law.

There's only one way in which this can be done, and that is that we see ourselves truly first. How do we do that? By coming under the law. No man ever knows the truth about himself until he is convicted by the law. That's the great argument of chapter 7 of this epistle that we've already dealt with, so we don't go back over that. But there, under the law and, still more strikingly, under the cross of Christ, we are humiliated. We are finished. We realize we are nothing and that we owe everything to the grace of God.

Here we are; we've seen ourselves. It is the law and the gospel that have brought us to see ourselves. We have been convicted of our sin, our spiritual deadness, our complete inability to do anything. That's brought us to see ourselves properly. But not only that, we've been given a new nature. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. That's 2 Corinthians 5:17.

But it's very important that we should also take with that the statement of the previous verse, the 16th, in that fifth chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians. "Wherefore," says Paul, "henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." This is absolutely vital. We've not only got a true view of ourselves, we've also got a true view of other people, of our neighbor.

We no longer think of people as Jews or Gentiles, British or non-British, one side of the Iron Curtain or the other. The natural man thinks in those terms. He can't think in any other, and that's his whole trouble. That's why his world is as it is. We don't. How do we think? We think of people as souls, souls in the sight of God. This is the peculiar mark of the Christian, that he views everybody now as a soul.

Our Lord goes as far as to say this: that this applies even to the most delicate and tender human relationships. He said he's going to divide a father from a son and a mother from a daughter, mother-in-law from a daughter-in-law. The sword that he's brought does divide in that way. Everybody who is a Christian knows how true this is. It doesn't mean that you've finished with natural human relationships, no. But it does mean that you're not controlled by them, that you see even your relatives as souls rather than as your relatives.

This is the essence of the new understanding that is given to the Christian. He sees his neighbor in a new way, and it doesn't matter who the neighbor is. Here is a way of thinking that transcends all natural thinking and, as far as the Christian is concerned, abolishes all those distinctions. You noticed it again in Colossians 3: there is neither barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female. That's done away with. That's natural thinking; it's not Christian thinking. In other words, the Christian not only sees himself differently, he sees his neighbor differently.

The whole point is that these two things are absolutely essential before any man can love his neighbor as himself. It works like this in practice: you've seen yourself to be nothing. Very well, if you are nothing, you're not going to be proud any longer. You've nothing to boast of, nothing at all. But you also see your neighbor truly. And now you see him not only as a soul, but you see him as a sinner. You see him as one who is exactly as you were: one who's under condemnation, one who's hell-bound, one who is absolutely helpless.

So at one and the same time, you feel no superiority over him. If you judge yourself and others in terms of human ability or social position or bank balance, there's going to be superiority and inferiority because we're all different. But here, there is no difference. We couldn't be worse than we are, we couldn't be more lost, but neither could they. They're in exactly the same position as we are. There is none righteous, no, not one. The whole world lieth guilty before God. All that is in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

But it runs through; it's the argument that is involved here. You see your neighbor exactly as yourself. You see your neighbor and yourself as completely hopeless people who can do nothing and are entirely dependent upon the grace and the mercy of God. So you now begin to feel sorry for this neighbor. We can put it like this: that with this insight, you don't see the man per se, the man himself as it were, you see him as a soul. You see him as the victim and the dupe of the devil.

So when he does things that you dislike and are offensive to you and hurtful to you, you don't so much see what he is doing nor the fact that it is he who's doing it; you see the devil behind him making him do this sort of thing. You're sorry for him as you're sorry for a poor man who's lost his reason and is behaving in an irrational manner. You don't get annoyed with a man who's beside himself, who's lost control, a man who's suffering from a mental illness. You don't get annoyed with him; you're sorry for him. You know he can't help it.

So you don't merely look at his actions; you look at what's behind all that. The result is this: that you have a great sorrow in your heart for these people and sympathy for them and a desire within you to help them, to help them to be delivered even as you have been delivered yourself. This is the only way in which a man can ever come to love his neighbor as himself. It is completely impossible in any other way. That sounds a very strong statement, but I'm making it not only because the Bible teaches it everywhere, but because human life proves the Bible to be true. It's as true today as it's ever been. Try as the world will, it can never do this.

Then, of course, if these people become converted and become Christians, you've got still greater reasons for loving them as yourself. We are now sharers of the same nature. We are now members of the same family. We are now bound together by bands and cords that are greater than anything that can ever be known on the human level. We've got the same interests, we are facing the same enemy, we've got the same problems, we've got the same glorious hope ahead of us facing us all. Everything conspires to make us one.

There's a perfect expression of all that in the hymn that begins with the words, "Through the night of doubt and sorrow, onward goes the pilgrim band." Read that hymn at your leisure and watch this repetition of the "one": one the hope, one this, one that. It's true because, you see, we are born of the same Spirit, we are sharers of the same nature, we've got the same Father, we've got the same Savior, everything is the same. We are sharing everything together. So naturally, you love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the way in which this statement here must be interpreted. But then on top of all this, we've got various appeals to help us to see this still more clearly. Of course, one of the most glorious of all in this respect is the great statement of it in the second chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, beginning at the third verse: "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." We've already had that, haven't we? He's already told us that in the 12th chapter of this epistle. "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others."

How can we do this? Why should we do it? Here's the answer: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Then he reminds us of what he has done for us, how he didn't hold on to his position and prerogatives but laid them aside and deliberately humbled himself. "Do the same," says Paul, "let this mind be in you. It is in you; we have the mind of Christ. Yes, but practice it. Let it operate with you, let it govern your thinking." Or we can sum it all up as we found last week in 1 John 4: "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." It's irrefutable logic. There's no reply to that if you know anything about the love of God. It becomes inevitable. "If God so loved us" as to send his Son and even to the death of the cross, "we ought also to love one another."

That is our reply to this modern specious teaching which says, "Don't worry about God, start with your neighbor. Look for your gracious neighbor. Love your fellow man. That's the way. Don't go to church or chapel; go to the bar parlors and the brothels of Algiers and there you'll find love and friendship and sympathy. That's it." Oh, what a lie it is. It's entirely wrong. The teaching of Abou Ben Adhem is entirely wrong. It's a denial of the gospel, and there is no greater denial. It is the greatest of all denials of the gospel.

It was the way in which the Pharisees denied the gospel. This is how it does it: if you say that a man as he is can love his neighbor and that therefore all he's got to do is to go out and find his neighbor and love his neighbor and help his neighbor, if you say that, there was never any need for the Son of God to come into this world. If all that is necessary is that men should be told to do that and encouraged to do it and to be told he'll be surprised what he finds if he tries to do it—for that is the teaching.

It takes many forms. I remember before the last world war, when there was a fighting between Japan and China, a typical exponent of this teaching flourishing here in London at the time put forward the suggestion that he and others were going to go and stand between the two armies and thereby put an end to the war. Fortunately, they didn't do that, but even if they had done it, they wouldn't have stopped the war.

But that is the kind of teaching. It's a complete denial of the gospel. If you say that man is capable of loving his neighbor as himself as he is, then I say the Son of God need never have left heaven. The cross is completely unnecessary. Regeneration is completely unnecessary. There is no greater denial of the gospel than this. This is a much more serious thing than drunkenness or drug-taking or any other particular sin. This is the greatest of all denials of the gospel, but it is what is being preached as the gospel at the present time and has a great deal of popularity.

But it's not only completely wrong as I'm saying; I would remind you again that it's nothing but talk. It doesn't work. It's sentimental talk which is not realistic. It doesn't face the facts. It's the sort of thing, of course, that people who spend their time sitting in studies or perhaps are passing through a certain stage of their career detached from life in universities and who know nothing about the practicalities of life—it's the sort of thing that sounds very wonderful. But the moment you come down into life and mix with men and women, you find it is a sheer impossibility. It's idle sentimental talk.

What is still more extraordinary, I've often found, is this: that the men who are most fond of talking like that and who interpret the gospel like that are not at all infrequently, I regret to have to say, some of the most difficult people I've ever met, certainly some of the most bitter people I have ever met. You may be against war and fighting and things like that. All right. But if your spirit is bitter, then you are transgressing the law much more than a man who takes part in his country's fighting against another country. If your spirit is bitter, that is the greatest sin of all. That's hatred.

It's an extraordinary thing, this, but it shows the fallacy of this teaching: that its greatest advocates, these sentimentalists, are often men of very bitter feelings and express their bitterness in their criticisms of those who don't agree with them. They're intolerant and self-righteous, which is the very opposite of the spirit that the Apostle is talking about. Very well, there is our answer to that. You must not interpret "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" as meaning that you shouldn't worry about theology and doctrine and all the teaching of the New Testament—just go out and find your neighbor and show your love to him. It isn't to be interpreted like that; it's the exact opposite.

We shall see that as we proceed in this way. Look at the 10th verse: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor." Why do you think he suddenly goes and puts it in the negative like that? "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor," having said in the eighth verse, "Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." Then the ninth verse, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Suddenly he drops to a negative: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor."

Why does he do that? I don't think there's any real difficulty about this. The point is that he's been quoting in the ninth verse the second table of the law, and the injunctions in the second table of the law are negatives. Of course, that's what he's dealing with here. That is his concern at the moment. He's now down at the level of the practicalities, ordinary details of life day by day. And there, the law itself deals with negations: "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not covet," "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and so on.

As he's dealing with negatives, so he sums it up again by saying, "Love doesn't do those things." So if you do love, you will never do any harm to your neighbor. That's the way to interpret this. He's showing that love covers it, covers the negative injunctions. If you're loving, you won't be guilty of breaking those negative injunctions. But of course, the whole time, the concept of love is a very positive one.

So he ends that 10th verse by again putting it like this: "Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." You mustn't say that the "therefore" only links with the first part of that 10th verse. You mustn't say "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." You mustn't say love is the fulfilling of the law because love does no harm to its neighbor. That isn't the connection. The last part of the 10th verse is the summing up of the whole statement from the beginning of the eighth verse and, indeed, right away back to the beginning of the 12th chapter.

So he puts it like this: when we are truly loving our neighbor, we cannot possibly at the same time be doing him any harm. And so we have been fulfilling and are fulfilling the second table of the law. But there's more than that to it. You are not merely loving your neighbor in a negative sense. You are doing that incidentally, so he rounds off the particular argument of the ninth verse. But you don't stop at that. You go beyond that.

"Love is the fulfilling of the law," which means this: that it is love alone that really enables us to fill the law right to the brim, as it were. In other words, merely by keeping the particular injunctions of the law, you're not carrying out the law fully. You are carrying out the law, but not fully, because the law doesn't stop at negatives. The law does really want you to go beyond not doing your neighbor any harm; it wants you to love your neighbor and to love your neighbor as thyself.

So we mustn't think of the law, he says, as a mere aggregate of rules and regulations. We mustn't think of the law as something which we've got to carry out mechanically, looking at its precepts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. It includes these things, but you can do these things mechanically and yet you haven't filled the law right out; you haven't fulfilled the law in that sense. And so he winds up this particular argument.

There are certain questions raised here which we must just note. The first question is: "Who is my neighbor?" Is the Apostle saying all this merely in our relationship to fellow Christians? The answer is no. It includes fellow Christians, but it doesn't stop at fellow Christians. It means everybody. You remember we have an authoritative statement about this. You remember what you read in the 10th chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, at verse 25: "Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' He said unto him, 'What is written in the law? How readest thou?' He answering said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.' And he said unto him, 'Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.'" But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" That's the way they get out of it, you see: "Who is my neighbor?" And the answer our Lord gave was the parable of the Good Samaritan.

That's your neighbor. The fact that he's a Samaritan doesn't mean that he's not your neighbor because you were a Jew. He's your neighbor, the man in trouble. You don't know him, the man who's been robbed and maltreated—that's your neighbor. That's the one that you love as yourself. And this is the teaching of the Scripture everywhere. As Christians, we are to love all men as ourselves. Remember, it goes as far as to say this: "Love your enemies."

Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. Is this possible? My answer is this: if God didn't love his enemies, there would never have been a Christian. None of us would be here tonight. God loved us when we were his enemies. "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another," and with the mind of Christ in us, we do it because, as I say, you don't see the man, you see him as the victim of the devil and of hell. You love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. If we're not loving our enemies, we are probably nothing but sentimentalists, sentimental religious people. Here's the test: love your enemies.

And you don't interpret that simply in terms of countries. You've got to love your neighbor. It's very much easier, isn't it, to love a country than it is to love an individual? It's very much easier to say, "Oh, those people, they're this, that, and the other, but they mustn't be fighting between nations." How much easier it is than to love your neighbor who's actually standing next to you at the moment and who is being very difficult and unkind and malicious and cruel. But this is Christianity: love your neighbor as yourself. It's always easier to love people when they're a long way off, but you're to love the man who's next to you, love your neighbor and love him as yourself.

It's all-inclusive. But the really important question that in some ways is raised here is this: the Christian's relationship to the law. You see, here's the Apostle addressing Christian believers, but he quotes the law. What is the relationship of the Christian to the law? This has been a great question, a great subject of debate and discussion in the church throughout the centuries.

How am I to live this Christian life? I've understood the truth, the doctrine. How am I to live it in actual practice? Here's the great problem, isn't it? It's a problem for all of us. It's always been a problem for Christian people. How do we please God? How do we live the Christian life? There have been two main schools of thought with regard to this, and they're still in existence. They've been there in different forms and guises throughout the centuries.

There is the one school of thought which we can designate under the title of mysticism. Mysticism: that means the contemplation of God, the culture, the nurture of the soul, the search for love. Recognizing that the thing that is of vital importance is the state and the condition in which we are, to have the love of God and the love of Christ in us, you concentrate on that—this searching for the knowledge of God, the experience of God, and especially of his love. Everything that goes under that heading of mysticism.

But then there's another school of thought, which has sometimes been called rigorism. What it really means is this: this other school of thought puts its emphasis not so much upon contemplation and meditation and the experience—it's not so much the question of the cultivating of a spirit of love, they say, it's a question of actually knowing what to do in detail and in practice and then proceeding to do it. So I can put up the alternatives like this: not only mysticism or rigorism, I can equally say it is love and law.

And here the two things are brought together: "Love is the fulfilling of the law." But though the Apostle says this and though we've found it in other places, there's been great confusion about this. There was great confusion about it before the Protestant Reformation, there has been great confusion about it since, and I say there is still confusion about it at the present time. What is the position? Well, here are certain things we can lay down as being absolute, and we'll all agree about these.

We are all clear, I trust, that we are no longer under the law. We've seen so many statements to that effect in chapters 6 and 7 of this great epistle. We're all by nature under the law. That is why we are told about our Lord that he was made of a woman, made under the law. We are all under the law of God, not only as a way of condemnation but as a way of teaching us how to live.

But the important aspect of that phrase "under the law" is this: that all by nature are under the condemnation of the law. The law condemns us all. Now you know that's stated so categorically in the third chapter. And of course, you've got to keep on carrying this in your mind right the way through. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. And it can never do more than that. That's what it was meant to do; that is what it does do.

And the law condemns us all. But as Christian people, as believers, as those who are in Christ, we are no longer under the law. We are dead to the law. That's the great argument of chapter 7: dead to sin in chapter 6, dead to the law in chapter 7. We've finished with it. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Now that means that I am no longer under the condemnation of the law. Not only that, it means this: that I am no longer vainly trying to fulfill the law and failing. I'm finished with that also.

What is my position? He keeps on telling us: we are not under the law, but we are under grace. But does that mean, therefore, that we've got nothing to do with the law? Many have interpreted it like that: "You mustn't talk about law to us as Christians. We've finished with it. We are no longer under the law. Paul says you are not under the law but under grace (Romans 6:14). Therefore, never mention law when you're dealing with a Christian."

But you mustn't say things like that because if you do, you're contradicting the Apostle Paul. Here he is in this 13th chapter himself talking about the law and giving us some of the details out of the second table of the law and applying it to Christian people. So we've got to be careful in our handling of that. We've finished with the law in the matter of vainly and uselessly trying to justify ourselves by it. We've finished with that. We've also finished with the condemnation that the law pronounces upon us. Still, we can be addressed and appealed to in terms of the law.

How? Like this: the law is still the most perfect expression of the way in which God would have us live. So it still applies to us like that. In other words, you don't sit back in a chair and think beautiful thoughts of love and say that's all that's necessary. Oh, no. You will never improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of the way in which God would have us live. Our Lord says that: love is the fulfilling of the law. Here it is, and he summarizes it in the love of God and love of the neighbor—the two sections in his reply to the lawyer.

So that is how we are related to the law as Christians. It is still the perfect expression of the kind of life that we should live. So we must get rid of the idea that love is just some mere sentimental feeling. Love always expresses itself in action. In Galatians 5, Paul says that there's no longer circumcision or uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. That's it. It's exactly the same. Law in us works by love as faith works by love.

And so it is true to say that if we love God and love our neighbor, we shall be carrying out God's commandments for us. Now we do not observe the commandments in order to make ourselves Christians. We observe the commandments because we are Christians. You see the difference? The trouble with the Pharisee, with the moralist, with the man who denies the gospel is that he's trying to make himself a Christian by trying to keep the commandments. It can't be done. It was a yoke, says Peter, that we couldn't bear; it was grievous, nobody could do it.

No, it's the other way around. We are to observe the details of the law because we are Christians. Interpreting Romans 8:4: what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We can now fill out the law and keep it because we are no longer walking after the flesh but after the Spirit. Here he is saying exactly the same thing; it's just a slightly different way of putting it.

It's important that we do not emphasize love only. Beware of the teaching which tells you it's all right, you've finished with the law, all you need to do now is to contemplate the love of God and to foster a spirit of love within yourself. I don't need any instruction, I don't need any detail—all I need is to concentrate on love. It's wrong. The Apostle himself specifically contradicts that teaching. He contradicts it here in this very passage we're dealing with. The whole of chapter 12 and this 13th chapter are contradictions of that wrong teaching.

But he does it everywhere. Do you remember how in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, in verses 17 and following, he says this: "I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk"? Then he tells them the sort of things that they mustn't do, comes down to details, and says, "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor... Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more." My friends, that's Christianity. The Christian is not a man who walks with his head up in the air thinking beautiful thoughts of love. He's told not to steal anymore.

So you see, we need these practical details. And did you notice it in that third chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, how he comes down again to these details and these particularities in a most extraordinary manner? "Put off these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth... Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness..." What? Does a Christian need to be told all this? Yes, he does. You don't just preach love to Christians; you've got to tell them in detail what they mustn't do. There's one side.

But remember, there's another side. Did you notice the extraordinary transition from the end of chapter 2 to the beginning of chapter 3? There he is at the end of chapter 2 saying this: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days." He says don't listen to these people who come to you and say, "Now look here, as a Christian you shouldn't eat this or that, or you shouldn't observe this day." Let no man—which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, and so on, and saying, "Touch not; taste not; handle not." He says don't listen to people like that. After the commandments and doctrines of men, which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.

There he is at the end of chapter 2 saying don't listen to these people who bring their rules and regulations to you, have nothing to do with them. Then he immediately goes on to say, "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence," and so on. Is he contradicting himself? No, he's not. What he's doing is this: he's as usual holding the perfect balance.

He is pointing out that there is the danger of some kind of mystical contemplation of love which doesn't relate itself to the facts of life. But he is also pointing out equally the danger of a legalism and of being so lost and immersed in details that you've forgotten the spirit. Now this is a most important matter. You've got to take the end of Colossians 2 with these injunctions in Colossians 3. Both of them apply to us.

Many have fallen into both these errors. I often think that one of the greatest dangers confronting the Puritans, the great Puritans, was this danger of legalism. They drew up long lists of what people should do and shouldn't do. They called it casuistry; they dealt with cases of conscience. People kept on going and saying what should we do in this instance, and they gave them almost a complete set of rules for life. The man who started it was a man called William Perkins, a very great man, but I always have a feeling that he leaned considerably in the direction of a legalism.

He was aware of it up to a point. It's a great fight. It's very interesting to trace this conflict in the thinking of the Puritans. Some of them tended to put the whole emphasis upon the spirit—they were called the radical Puritans, Walter Cradock and people like that. And even before them, let's not forget this, that the great Bishop John Hooper of Gloucester and John Bradford, burnt here at Smithfield, they put their emphasis on the spiritual side. They didn't neglect the other. But then Perkins and many of these others, they were so concerned about the danger of antinomianism and of talking about love and doctrines and not practicing it, that they tended to go to the other extreme and gave you these long detailed lists which virtually come under the condemnation of the end of Colossians 2.

Ultimately you come to this and see the all-importance of maintaining a balance. Both are necessary. You mustn't only talk about the spirit; the letter is also vital. But you mustn't only talk about the letter, for the letter killeth; it is the spirit that giveth life. What you need then—what you need is the letter and the spirit, and that is what the Apostle is teaching here. Letter and spirit, law and love. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Don't separate these things; they must always and invariably go together.

As he puts it in 1 Corinthians 13: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." You've got gifts, yes, but if they're not accompanied by love, if they're not manifestations of love, they're no use. That's what he says. "I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor"—surely a man who does that is full of love. No, he may be a very selfish person doing it all because he is filled with pride. You can give your body to be burned, but if you don't do it in love and have no love, it profiteth you nothing. This is the perfect balance. Colossians 2 and 3: these things always going together. Don't put love and law as opposites. Love is the fulfilling of the law. So you concentrate on the spirit, but you also carry the details with you. The love will help you to carry out the details.

Remember, if you're not carrying out the details, your talk about love is quite useless. Shall I close then by putting it in the form of an illustration? It is ultimately, I think, the kind of difference between a mechanical performance and real art. A man may play the piano absolutely correctly. He hasn't played a single wrong note. Mechanically perfect. But he may be entirely devoid of any true art. The playing of the notes of a piece is not enough. The piece of music has got a soul, and the artist is the man who while mechanically correct brings out the soul. But without the soul, it's mechanically correct but it's lifeless and fairly useless.

May I say this to my fellow preachers here tonight: this is equally important in preaching and teaching. There is no greater mistake than to think that if a man preaches the right doctrine, he is of necessity preaching. You can stand and mouth the correct words and terms, but you may be dead and you may not help anybody at all. There must be life, there must be power, there must be this something extra. The mere statement of correct beliefs and points of view—that's not preaching. There is something beyond that. It's the spirit, and that alone is the thing that gives life. Let's beware of a dead orthodoxy. That becomes legalism in the end. Nobody's ever converted under it, nobody's stimulated to live the Christian life under it. That's not preaching. You must be correct, but over and above, there must be this something extra. I've often thought in this connection that the words of the poet Wordsworth put it rather well. You remember the poem to the Skylark: "Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

The mystic is the man who roams, he loses himself in the mystic contemplation so often and loses contact with life, having wonderful experiences but of no value to anybody, like Peter wanting to stay in the mount of transfiguration and put up the tents. No, there are problems at the foot of the mount. "Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." It's all right to have your head in the clouds as long as your feet are on the earth. That's the balance. The two things must always go together. So you don't only talk about love and you don't only talk about law. What you say is "Love is the fulfilling," the full carrying out of the law. Not the mechanical carrying out—the full carrying out. The art, the glory, the spirit, the vital thing: love is the fulfilling of the law. God fill us with this love.

O Lord, that is indeed our prayer and our desire, that we may be living epistles known and read of all men. Grant that it may be manifest unto all, manifestly declared, that we are the epistles of Christ, written not with ink nor on the tables of stone, but by the Spirit in the fleshy tables of the heart. O God, we pray Thee to give us understanding of these things, so that in all we do and say, we shall ever be telling forth the glory and the wonder of Thy ways. O Lord, fulfill this in us. 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, throughout the remainder of this journey of ours in this world of time and evermore. Amen.