Modernized by Cliff Collins

“The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the law and make it honorable.” (Isaiah 42: 21)

In speaking from these words, I propose to consider:

I. WHO THE PROPHET IS TALKING ABOUT.

II. WHY HE SHOULD MAGNIFY THE LAW AND MAKE IT HONOURABLE.

III. HOW HE WILL DO THIS.

And then I will close with some conclusions and remarks.

I. WHO THE PROPHET IS TALKING ABOUT.

I believe we can all agree that these words are spoken about our Lord Jesus Christ: I don’t think that anyone here would call this into question. It says, “The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake”, the person spoken about here, then, is our Lord Jesus Christ. The next question is:

II. WHY HE SHOULD MAGNIFY THE LAW AND MAKE IT HONORABLE; AND WHAT LAW IS THIS?

1. Here, let me say that a lot of the infidelity and skepticism in the world today has originated in the fact that so many men never had any clear ideas of what the law of God really is, and its relationship to themselves. All they ever look at is the letter of the law. They completely overlook the spirit of the law, believing that the law comes from God’s arbitrary will, and that He can refrain from executing it at His pleasure.

To make myself understood, I must give you my idea of the true nature of the moral law that I am talking about. We have the letter of this law written in the Ten Commandments; and indeed all the precepts in the Bible can be viewed as simply explaining this law, since the principle contained in it applies to our outward physical conduct. A true idea of the spirit of the moral law will show us that it originated in the eternal and immutable nature of God.

God has always existed; and with that came certain natural attributes. He possessed omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc. Now, there must have been some way in which it became Him, from His very nature, to use the attributes that He naturally and eternally possesses, and there must be some way in which His intelligence affirms that these attributes should be used. Now, observe, when we understand truly the spirit of the moral law, our reason tells us that all creatures are under obligation to exercise universal obedience to it. The moral law, then, is the eternal affirmation of God’s own mind concerning what course of conduct is proper for God and all moral agents. It is the eternal and necessary affirmation of God’s reason and conscience as to how the attributes of any moral agent should be used.

Moral law is a concept that must exist in God’s mind, and in the minds of all moral agents. For example, no man can doubt that God’s eternal reason must have affirmed that He should be benevolent. Who can doubt that selfishness or malevolence in God would have been sin in Him? If God had been selfish and malevolent instead of being benevolent, that would have been sin in Him. Why? Because God is a moral agent! Men are moral agents, and they have a nature that naturally leads them to admit this. The benevolence of God is really His virtue. Why? Because the exercise of benevolence complies with that rule of conduct in God, His reason affirms His own obligation to obey it. Now, I have thought sometimes, that people completely overlook the fact that God is a moral agent, and just as much a subject of moral obligation as they are. This statement surprises some people. They are afraid that it might be derogatory to God’s character. But, if what I just said was not true, God could not be virtuous. Because God is virtuous, He must be a moral agent. And if He is a moral agent, He must be under moral obligation. The moral law was not given to God by any other being, for God is a law to Himself. His eternal reason and conscience affirms that being benevolent would be right in Him, and being selfish would be wrong. Therefore, when God acts according to the moral law, He complies with an eternal law of His own nature, which determines His own conduct as the condition of His happiness and the condition of the happiness of all moral agents.

Please understand, that the moral law did not originate in God’s arbitrary will. It originated in His eternal consciousness. It is a rule of action that is prescribed to Him by His own consciousness. This law is also prescribed to us by our conscience. The authority of God also enforces the moral law. If we had nobody to enforce this law, but we still had our human nature, our conscience would prescribe this rule of action to us telling us that we should be benevolent. If God’s arbitrary will had originated this law, He could change or eliminate laws whenever He felt like it. He could change the nature of virtue and vice. He could make that which is now virtue, vice, and that which is now vice, virtue, simply by changing His law. But, does anyone think that God could do this? Now, God cannot change the nature of virtue and vice, and He never claimed to have the power to do so. Since this law does not originate in God’s arbitrary will, it is binding on us, as moral agents, by the very laws of our being.

God created us to be moral agents like Him, and so we know in our hearts that we are obligated to obey this law. He commands us to obey by His own authority, and makes it obligatory by a law of our own nature. Now, the spirit of this law requires universal and perfect benevolence to God and man. By benevolence, I mean love, with reference to the law of God and to the universe. This is what God’s law requires of all moral agents. Now, observe, this law is as unalterable as God’s own nature is. God did not create it, and so He can’t change it in the least degree. He did not create it any more than He created himself. Like God, it never came into existence. Originating in His self-existing nature, His own reason must have eternally recognized it as the course of action to pursue; and thus it is clear that this law can never be repealed by Him, and made less obligatory in reference to Himself, or us. The law can never undergo any change in its requirements, and it can never be done away with in any case whatever.

2. Again: this law is infinitely valuable in the end that it tries to secure. It is naturally impossible for moral agents to be happy unless they are virtuous, and virtue consists in obeying this eternal law. All virtue consists in perfect love. Love is virtue in all moral agents. Our happiness is in proportion to how much we conform to this law. Virtue is the basis of happiness in God or in anybody else. This law, then, aims to secure and promote all that creates happiness as the condition of the happiness of God and of His creatures.

I believe that you will agree that the things I’m talking about this morning are self-evident truths. The mind of every moral agent declares that they are true. By a law built into our own nature, we affirm that these things are true and must be true. For example, benevolence is proper and appealing in God, therefore God is obligated to love. The opposite course would be wrong. Mind you, I am not saying that God was or ever will be wicked; I’m just supposing the possibility. Hence, every moral agent will affirm that the moral law is a law that God imposes on Himself, and that it did not originate in His arbitrary will. Obedience to the moral law can never be dispensed with, repealed, or altered under any circumstances.

Again: every moral agent must also agree that this law has infinite value, because it aims to secure an infinitely valuable end.

3. The true spirit of this law can never be violated. There may be exceptions to the letter of the law, but not to the spirit of the law. Nobody possesses the power to make any exception to the spirit of the moral law; but there may be exceptions to the letter of the law. The law prohibits working on the Sabbath, and yet the priests were allowed to do the work of the sanctuary on the Sabbath without violating the spirit of the command. All labor was prohibited, but works of need and mercy were nevertheless allowed, and even required. These were exceptions to the letter of the moral law, but not to its spirit; to which there can be no exception.

Anyone who transgresses the moral law publicly denies his obligation to obey. He denies the propriety, need, and justice of the law itself, and declares by his actions, that it is not worthy to be obeyed.

4. Let us look at why Christ has to magnify the law and make it honorable. Mankind had publicly and most blasphemously denied their obligation to obey this law. Now, observe! If any other than a public act for forgiving sin and setting aside the penalty of this law had been adopted, if no regard had been paid to its vindication, God would have sanctioned the dishonor done to the law. The law had been denied. Man had denied its justice. Suppose God should come forth and set aside the execution of the law, and made a universal offer of pardon without paying any attention to the dishonor of the law through any public act whatever, wouldn’t this dishonor the law. Now, man directly and emphatically had come right out in front of the whole universe and denied that the law has to be obeyed, that disobedience was just, proper, necessary, and reasonable; and let me say that by their actual transgressions, they denied the power of the law in a higher sense than they could by mere words. Now, if God very good-naturedly said, “Well, that doesn’t matter, I will forgive you if you are sorry”, and paid no attention to the dishonor that had been done to the law, would this have magnified the law and made it honorable? If God had publicly done this, He would have sanctioned all the horrible dishonor that has been done to His law. If God did this, everyone would see that God would have been unjust to Himself, unjust to the law, unjust to the universe, and ruinous to everybody. Therefore, it could never happen.

5. Again: two things, then, must be done if men are to be saved at all. First, something must be done to honor this law, and to honor it as thoroughly as it has been dishonored. Second, something must be done to restore men to obedience as a condition of their being pardoned; something that must restore them to that state of virtue, love, and confidence that the law requires. These two things must be done: to save the law from dishonor, and the universe from ruin. Can you see that the law has been disgraced? Therefore, the degraded law must be made honorable. Man has been rebellious. Man must be made obedient to honor the law.

6. This leads me to say that both the precept and penalty must be vindicated: both have been denied, both have been dishonored. Now, it’s easy to see that no subject of God’s government, no mere creature can vindicate either the precept or the penalty of this law. It’s easy to see that the Lawgiver must magnify both, as the condition of it being proper for Him to not execute the penalty against sinners. Now, this law may be honored by executing its penalty against the offender, or it may be honored by some substitute taking the sinner’s place, if one can be found.

7. Again, I ask, how can God honor the law? Here again, we have important light shed on the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ, and on His need to possess two natures in order to perform the work that was assigned to Him. The obedience of any mere creature could not sufficiently vindicate this law. Great multitudes of the human race have denied the propriety and justice of the law. Now, if any mere creature comes forth and obeys it, this would not sufficiently honor the law that had been dishonored by multitudes. Now, it is very easy to see that if Christ possessed two natures, human and divine, that He would be in a perfect position to magnify the law and make it honorable. Officially, and before the universe, He obeyed the law in both His natures; recognizing its obligation on God and all moral agents.

So, we see that moral law is the rule of God’s conduct, as well as the rule of our conduct. It is a rule that God imposed on Himself, and He is just as obliged to obey as we are. Now, no mere creature, by obeying this law, can show its obligation on Jehovah Himself. But when man denied its obligation, Jehovah himself came forth in the presence of the universe, and acknowledged its obligation, by recognizing it in His two natures--one the nature of man who denied its obligation; and in this nature He obeyed every jot and tittle of it. “Heaven and earth”, He said, “shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” (Matt 24:35) Heaven and earth are not as steadfast as this law. Thus, we see that in these two natures that Christ fully obeyed the law, and although it has been trampled on and degraded, Christ lifted it up as high as the throne of Jehovah.

8. The suffering of anyone who has no other relation to God than that of a mere creature, cannot vindicate the justice of the law, or the penalty that it denounced against sin. But the Lord Jesus Christ, by taking two natures, and by the public sacrifice of His human nature on the altar of public justice, in vindication of this law and as a substitution for the execution of its penalty, did what no one but He could do. Christ suffered the penalty of this law. In some sense, He did not suffer as sinners had to suffer. He could not feel the bitterness and remorse that sinners feel when they disobey the law. However, Christ magnified this law, and made it honorable, for He established a relationship between the Lawgiver and those who had denied their obligation to obey the law. How beautifully, then, in the union of these two natures, He vindicated the law, and thoroughly honored it in every particular.

Any government that exercises mercy towards rebels can run into serious problems, and this is especially noticed in such a government as God’s. A little reflection on this will lead to the conclusion that an atonement was absolutely necessary.

9. Our Lord Jesus Christ by His life completely illustrated the true spirit of the law. He must magnify the law and make it honorable; and He asserted its universal obligation by His life, which is a perpetual illustration of what the law requires of human beings. He always manifested the true spirit of this law. He lived among us, taught us how we ought to live, and what we could be if we thoroughly obeyed the law of God. He showed us what society would be like if we all obeyed God’s law; what adults would be like; what children and youth would be like; how obliging, kind, and holy. Now, by His life He calls on us, and says, "Suppose all men were like Me. Suppose all men possessed the same simple-heartedness, the same truthfulness, the same regard for God’s honor and regard for the happiness of others, would society remain the same? The whole race has denied the appropriateness of this law; but I proved that it is excellent by showing in My life what society would be like be if it was obeyed. I obeyed it in every respect. You deny that this law is good and appropriate; but if it was demonstrated in each individual life like it is in mine, what would any society in heaven or on earth be lacking?” Thus, then, God, through His living teacher, condemns sin, and shows us the importance of the law and its absolute perfection.

10. Thus, Christ , by His life, declared and illustrated the great and unspeakable need for this law. He not only expounded its meaning, and gave Himself up to teach the Jews and the world its real meaning, but in every way He contended for its reasonableness, beauty, need, and immutability in all things. Thus Christ magnified, both in His life and in His preaching, this Divine and immutable law of God. Who can doubt that He was all the law required Him to be?

11. Christ taught that mercy without satisfaction being made to the law’s insulted majesty was not possible; and He undertook the work of satisfaction; to magnify the law and make it honorable.

Let me close with a few remarks and conclusions.

1. The Gospel does not intend to repeal the law. “Do we then make void the law through faith?” said the apostle, “Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law”. (Rom 3:31) By His life and death, Christ honored the law; and so He provided means of rebuking the rebellious lives of sinners. The spirit of the law pervades the Gospel, and those who think that the moral law is not part of the Gospel are totally wrong. Such people make Christ the minister of sin. They pit Christ against the moral law; for how could He by doing away with the, law make it honorable? This would weaken the law. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that men should be saved by their own righteousness, that they should be restored to happiness by the law as the foundation of their acceptance with God. I don’t mean that at all. What I mean is that a condition of their forgiveness is that they must stop their rebelling, and become submissive and obedient to the authority of the law. A man who has violated a law can never be justified by it. This is both naturally and governmentally impossible. But there must be obedience to the law as a condition of forgiveness for past sins and offences.

2. Again: this is implied in the exercise of saving faith. Saving faith is faith that works by love. No faith is justifying faith that is not sanctifying faith. No hope is a good hope but the hope that leads its possessor to purify himself even as Christ is pure. There are people who believe that the Gospel does away with the moral law, and that they will be saved by faith without love. They know nothing of the true way of salvation. They should immediately understand that the law is an essential part of the Gospel. Please understand me. I don’t mean that universal and perfect obedience to the law is a condition of being saved by the Gospel; but I do mean that under the Gospel we have the same rule of life that they have in heaven. The law there is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” and this is as truly our rule of duty here as it is in heaven. The Gospel emphasizes this love, and requires us to manifest this love. Saving faith is the result of this love; and this love, when rightly understood, is indispensable to virtue.

3. Christ still honors the law by continuing to require its fulfillment as a condition of saving those for whom He died. He requires them to confess and renounce their sins first, and thus acknowledge the appropriateness of the law. The law is not evil; and those who continue in sin dishonor the law. They must repent; they must justify the law and condemn themselves; they must, by a public act, renounce their sins. The act of renunciation must be as public as the act of rebellion. They must reverence the law. They must subscribe to it. They must obey it and exercise the love that it requires. This is Christ’s condition of saving those He died for. Even in the days of the Apostles, people began to have wrong ideas on this subject. The false idea that the law and the Gospel were opposed to each other quickly took possession of their minds because the Apostles so often stressed the need of justification by faith. But the Apostles never taught that the law and the Gospel were opposed to each other. The Jews believed that sinners were saved by obedience to the moral and ceremonial law; their religion was a religion of mere outward morality. That was the condition of the Jews as a nation. I don’t mean that all the Jews believed this because there were many who understood the true nature of the law. They understood that the moral law required love and confidence in God. They also knew that the ceremonial law was figurative of the atonement, which was to take place sometime in the future. Pious and devout men understood this, but the Jews as a nation, almost without exception, had no idea of the spiritual character of the law, and their teachers taught a different doctrine altogether.

The Jewish teachers taught that men would be saved by mere outward morality, by abstaining from those things that were forbidden in the ceremonial law, and by keeping the letter of the commandments written on the two tables of stone. Now, observe, the Apostles tried to show the Jews that they completely misunderstood the conditions of salvation. Christ had taught this, and after Christ’s ascension, the Apostles enlarged on what He had taught, illustrating their position by His death and resurrection, the ceremonial law, the tabernacle, and so on, insisting on it that men were to be saved by faith in Christ. However, there were some who misunderstood what the Apostles intended, which was this: that they were to be justified by faith in Christ, which works by love, as opposed to legal works.

The Apostle Paul, who wrote the most on this subject, did not mean to say that they would be saved without love for the law, for he insisted that the faith that was essential to salvation was the faith that works through love. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” (Gal 5:5) Paul was not saying that a man could be saved without obedience to the law, without love. He said that men were to be justified by that faith in Christ that works by love, in opposition to any works of their own. He was not teaching that men were justified on the ground of love and obedience to the law, but he meant that they were justified completely by Christ, by what Christ had done; that they were to expect forgiveness on the ground of what Christ had done and on the condition that they should believe in Him and love Him.

Now, the error that I’m trying to protect you from has prevailed, more or less, from the days of the Apostles. This error began to develop itself early, and James, in his Epistle, wanted to correct this error. Some think that the Epistle of James contradicts the Epistle of Paul, but nothing is further from the truth. James insisted that we have a faith that works by love; a practical faith that makes us holy. The Apostle Paul says that works do not justify men, but both agree that personal holiness is a condition of salvation, not a ground of salvation.

4. Many people throughout the Church age have arrayed the Gospel against the law, as if the moral law has been abolished. Let me illustrate what I mean. In one of the cities of the United States, where a revival took place a few years ago, a lady who belonged to an Episcopal church in that city came to me and said, “I am distressed with the state of things in our Church; the ladies of that Church are so conformed to the world in their habits of dress, and in their frivolous and light conduct, that I went to our minister about it, and told him how much I was grieved; and what do you think he said to me? He said, ‘I consider that these ladies are among the most pious members of my church; the reason why they act as they do is that they don’t rely on their own works, they expect to be saved alone by the merits of Christ.’”

Now, what sort of an idea did the minister and these people have of the Gospel, of the way of salvation? Just think of this; these people were living worldly, selfish, self-indulgent lives, and yet they expected to be saved by the merits of Christ. They believed that the righteousness of Christ was imputed to them in such a sense that they could personally conform to the world, and yet be saved. They could live like all other sinners, and yet by an imputed righteousness that did not imply any personal holiness, they could be saved. What is this but a belief that they no longer had to obey the law? And what is this but the religion of millions of people? You urge them to live a holy life, and this is not the Gospel to them. You urge them to obey, to deny self, and to live lives worthy of their high vocation, and they cry that this isn’t the Gospel. They say that you are encouraging people to establish a holiness of their own!

Now, my beloved listeners, wherever you see that kind of spirit, you can be sure there is something wrong. Yes, men must be accepted and justified on the ground of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done; but remember, it is only on the condition of their personally accepting Him, giving Him their hearts and yielding themselves up to obedience.

5. Finally: Sinners, by faith, must honor the dishonored law. Suppose Christ should honor the law, but not require us to pay any regard to His atonement by repentance and faith as a condition of our salvation, could we honor the law that way? If God won’t pardon sin unless Christ dies, neither will He forgive any human being who does not repent of sin and accept Christ personally. Mankind has trampled down the law, and Christ made an atonement, and does God intend to save men without any reference to this atonement? Never! God will never forgive sin without faith and repentance. Nothing can be more certain. It is just as certain that God will never allow the law to be dishonored, as it is that Christ has made an atonement for sin, and thus honored the law. He will never stop short and save sinners, because they are skeptical, proud, and self-righteous enough to reject the atonement. I tell you there is no hope of this. Let everyone who rejects the atonement, and expect to be saved without Christ, know that God will never consent to dishonor His law, and He certainly will never forgive them unless they recognize Christ! Why should He do so?