Romans 3:19-20 Now we know that what things soever the law said, it said to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped… When we are told what we ought to do, we learn that we are not doing as we ought. 1. The faintest spark of natural conscience in a savage bosom serves this end at least, that the barbarian's grosser acts of treachery or cruelty seem evil even to himself. The educated conscience of an old Greek or Roman imposed on him a severer standard and made him ashamed of less flagrant crimes. Moses' nobler code, given by Jehovah Himself, trained the Hebrew people by degrees to regard as sinful practices which neighbouring nations called innocent, and exalted every instinctive vice of the blood into the express transgression of a recorded statute. The New Testament morality has made the modern conscience quicker than ever to detect, and louder than ever in condemning what is false, dishonourable, impure, and ungenerous. Thus each addition to revealed law widens men's knowledge of what is sinful, and pushes forward the frontier of the forbidden a little nearer to that ideal line which God's nature prescribes. 2. Again, when a law has succeeded in educating one's conscience to recognise that what is forbidden is in itself evil, that what is commanded is right, there follows a certain desire to keep that law — an effort even after keeping it. We cannot approve what is good and not wish to pursue it. The moral pressure thus put upon a man's natural likings serves, in many an instance, to reveal to himself his moral impotence. The good he fain would do in his better moods he fails to do in the moment of temptation; and when the recoil comes, and desire has burnt itself down to white cold ash, and the law awakes afresh within the conscience to judge the man for that weak and wicked yielding to an improper desire, then comes a new and very bitter knowledge of sin. It is the knowledge of sin as a strong thing, stronger than I am — a hateful, hostile power, an alien despot, that has entrenched itself within my nature, and lords it there over everything that is wholesome in me. 3. Suppose, further, that a man is become so far a creature of the law that through long education he has been trained to walk contentedly within its close fences — he has got used to curb his temper and choke down his passions, and always to wear a smooth decorous face; suppose he is thus all that the law can make him, irreproachable in the presence of society, fair spoken, scrupulous, "as touching the law blameless" — why then he is only on the road to a still more profound knowledge of Sin. For such a man, if he is honest and thorough, will admit to himself, that deep down beneath this blameless exterior the old passions will not be quenched, nor the old self-will slain. He will admit that in doing violence to his tastes he has not changed them. He has merely drilled himself into outward prosperity, but at the root remains ungodly. Is it unfair to say that such righteousness is little better than a mask, useful in society, but sure to be detected by the judgment of Heaven? that the heart of such men resembles a volcano over which the lava has in the meantime cooled? What a terrific knowledge of sin is here! What a discovery of the incurableness of the heart's evil! What a revelation of the impotence of law and the unattainableness of genuine righteousness under any system of legal repression! Surely by the law, do as you will, there is no path to a satisfying righteousness in the sight of God, but only to a deeper and ever deeper knowledge of sin! (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. |
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