Spirituality of the Law
45
“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the
high God? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves
of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or
with ten thousands of rivers of oil? ... He hath showed thee, O man,
what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Micah 6:6-8
.
The prophet Hosea had pointed out what constitutes the very
essence of Pharisaism, in the words, “Israel is an empty vine, he
bringeth forth fruit unto himself.”
Hosea 10:1
. In their professed ser-
vice to God, the Jews were really working for self. Their righteousness
was the fruit of their own efforts to keep the law according to their
own ideas and for their own selfish benefit. Hence it could be no better
than they were. In their endeavor to make themselves holy, they were
trying to bring a clean thing out of an unclean. The law of God is as
holy as He is holy, as perfect as He is perfect. It presents to men the
righteousness of God. It is impossible for man, of himself, to keep this
law; for the nature of man is depraved, deformed, and wholly unlike
the character of God. The works of the selfish heart are “as an unclean
thing;” and “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”
Isaiah 64:6
.
While the law is holy, the Jews could not attain righteousness by
their own efforts to keep the law. The disciples of Christ must obtain
righteousness of a different character from that of the Pharisees, if they
[55]
would enter the kingdom of heaven. God offered them, in His Son, the
perfect righteousness of the law. If they would open their hearts fully to
receive Christ, then the very life of God, His love, would dwell in them,
transforming them into His own likeness; and thus through God’s free
gift they would possess the righteousness which the law requires. But
the Pharisees rejected Christ; “being ignorant of God’s righteousness,
and going about to establish their own righteousness” (
Romans 10:3
),
they would not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Jesus proceeded to show His hearers what it means to keep the
commandments of God—that it is a reproduction in themselves of the
character of Christ. For in Him, God was daily made manifest before
them.