The High Obligations under Which Believers Lie to Yield Even Perfect Obedience to the Law as a Rule of Life
All who are united to Christ and justified for His righteousness imputed to them are dead to the law as a covenant not that they may be “without law to God” but that they may be “under the law to Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21); not that they may continue in disobedience but that they may be inclined and enabled to perform sincere obedience in time, and perfect obedience through eternity, to the law as a rule of life. One design of their being delivered from the obligation of the law in its federal form is that they may be brought under the eternal obligation of it as a rule of duty in the hand of the adorable Mediator. Divested of the form of a covenant of works to believers and invested with that of the covenant of grace, it stands under the covenant of grace as the law of Christ and as the instrument of government in its spiritual kingdom, enforced by all its original and immutable author- ity. It loses nothing of its original authority by its being conveyed to believers in such a blessed channel as the hand of Christ since He Himself is God over all and since the majesty, sovereignty, and authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are in Him as Mediator (Ex. 23:21).
Indeed, it behooved the law of the Ten Commandments, inas- much as it is the substance of the law of nature, a delineation of God’s moral image, and a transcript of His unspotted holiness, to be a perpetual and unalterable rule of conduct to mankind in all the possible states and circumstances in which they might be placed. Since God is unchangeable in His moral image, nothing but the
entire annihilation of every human creature can divest His holy law of that office. Its being an immutable rule of duty to the human race does not in the least depend on its having become the matter of the covenant of works. Whatever form it might receive, whether that of the covenant of works or that of the covenant of grace, still it could not but continue an authoritative rule of conduct. No form, no cov- enant whatever, could at any time lessen its high obligation as a rule of duty on the reasonable creature. As the form of the first covenant was merely accessory to the moral law, so the law continues, and will forever continue, under that form as the rule of duty to sinners, even in the place of torment. And as the form of the second covenant is also accessory to it, so it will remain eternally under this form, the rule of life, to saints in the mansions of glory.
The sovereign authority of the divine law continues eternally the same, and it can never be in the least impaired by any of the forms under which that law is promulgated to us. And seeing that God the Father has so consulted the necessity of His redeemed, in subordina- tion to His own glory, as to put His law into the hands of His eternal Son as Mediator, from these hands they receive it invested with all the sovereign authority that ever belonged to it, together with all that God the Son as their great Redeemer has added to it. That believers ought not to receive—nay, and cannot receive—the law otherwise than from the hand of the infinitely glorious Mediator is so far from being injurious to the infinite majesty of God, the sovereign Creator, or to the high obligation of His holy law, that the infinite honor of His glorious majesty and His holy law is thereby most illustriously displayed. As the law as a covenant of works was honored in an infi- nite degree by its having been obeyed and satisfied by the eternal Son of God in our nature, so, as a rule of life to believers, it is magnified in no less a degree by its being conveyed to them in His hand. Their obligation to perform not only sincere but even perfect obedience to it is on these accounts confirmed and increased. Now the obligation
under which all true believers are to yield such obedience to the law as a rule of life proceeds chiefly from the following sources:
1. It arises from God being the Lord, or from His being the sover- eign, supereminent, and supremely excellent Jehovah. The obligation under which believers lie to yield obedience to His law arises from His universal supremacy and sovereign authority over them as rational creatures. “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judg- ments.… I am the LORD” (Lev. 18:5). “And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which sanctify you” (20:8). Because God is Jehovah, “the eternal, immutable, and almighty God, having His being in and of Himself, and giving being to all His words and works,”1 all obedience is due Him. The infinite greatness, excellence, and amiableness of the perfections of Jehovah make it the duty of all men, and especially of all believers, to love Him supremely, to obey Him in all things, and to make His glory the chief end of all their obedience to Him. The infinite supereminence and amiableness of Jehovah lay them under inconceivably high obligations to love Him above themselves and to live to Him ultimately and not to them- selves. And as His greatness, excellence, and loveliness are infinite, immutable, and eternal, and as the highest possible degree of love and obedience is therefore due to Him, so the obligation under which believers lie to love and obey Him even in a perfect degree is infinite, immutable, and eternal.
They are thus bound to love and obey Him with all their hearts because He is the Lord, or because He is what He is. On this account principally, and antecedently to every other consideration of Him, He is inexpressibly amiable; and therefore, they are under the firm- est obligation to love and obey Him, and that in the highest possible degree. This obligation, arising from that infinite greatness, excel- lence, and loveliness of God that result from His natural and moral perfections, is binding on believers previously to any consideration of
1. Westminster Larger Catechism 101.
rewards or punishments, or even of the revealed will of God; and it is that from which all other ties to duty derive their obligatory force. It is from the infinite excellence and amiableness of the divine nature that every additional obligation under which they lie to perfect love and perfect obedience derives its binding force.
2. The obligation under which believers are to yield perfect obedience to the law as a rule flows also from God being their Creator and they being His creatures. It is He who made them and not they themselves (Ps. 100:3). They receive life, breath, and all things from His creating hand. His right, therefore, to them and to their perfect and perpetual obedience is not only original, underived, and perfect, but infinite. The power that He employed in creating them was infinite, and therefore He has an infinite right to all that they are, have, and can perform. By right of creation, the Lord has an irreversible and perpetual claim to their supreme love and their cordial and grateful obedience.
The relation subsisting between Him as their Creator and them as His creatures lays them under the firmest bond of subjection and obedience to Him, and the grace of the gospel, instead of dimin- ishing, increases the force of that natural obligation. The sovereign Creator is far from having resigned His right of dominion over His saints by His having afforded them, independent of their own works, a title to eternal life. For as they cease not to be creatures by being made new creatures, so they are and shall eternally continue bound, by the sovereign authority of the triune God as their Creator, to yield personal and perfect obedience to His law as a rule of life. The divine law, as I have already observed, loses nothing of its original obligation by being divested of its covenant form and conveyed to believers in the hand of Christ, for “by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16). And the sovereignty, authority, and all other excellencies of the Father are in the Son; yea, “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Indeed, that high obligation cannot cease to retain
its original force as long as the immutable and eternal Jehovah cannot cease to be the Creator and the saints to be His creatures.
3. Their obligation to obey the divine law as a rule of duty arises from God being their continual preserver. “In him,” says the apostle Paul, “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And, says the holy psalmist, “LORD, thou preservest man and beast” (Ps. 36:6). His eyes are on all His works, so that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without Him (Matt. 10:29). “By the word of his power,” He upholds all His creatures in their being and operation (Heb. 1:3). Every living creature lives on His goodness and subsists by His bounty. His infinite power every moment upholds all, His unsearch- able wisdom governs all, and His unbounded goodness cares and provides for all. He opens His“hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing” (Ps. 145:16). But in a special manner, “he preserveth the souls of his saints” (97:10). “The LORD preserveth all them that love him” (145:20). “The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore” (121:7–8).
Since believers, then, are every moment dependent on God for
the continuance and comfort both of their natural and spiritual life, they are bound, in obedience to His law as the rule of their life, to love Him supremely, to serve Him constantly, and to glorify Him in their body and spirit, which are His (1 Cor. 6:20). The necessary rela- tion in which they stand to Him as their constant preserver obliges them to devote cheerfully all that they are, have, and do to His service and glory. Their being and their welfare are continually upheld and defended by His omnipotent arm; and therefore, these ought at all times to be employed for Him. And because His manifested glory is His chief end in preserving His saints, they are bound to make it their chief end also in all that they do (1 Cor. 10:31).
4. The obligation under which the spiritual seed of Christ lie to per- form perfect and perpetual obedience to the law of God flows also from His being their God in covenant.
He is their God in Christ and in the covenant of grace, and this obliges them to perform universal obedience to His righteous law as it is in the hand of Christ and as it stands under the covenant of grace. He is also their God in grant or offer. He offers Christ, the blessed Mediator, to them in common with all the other hearers of the gos- pel, and He also offers Himself to them, to be in Christ their God. In the preface to the Ten Commandments, He says to every hearer of the gospel, “I am the Lord thy God,” as if He had said, “I am your God in offer.” And in the first commandment, as was observed above, He requires everyone to believe the gracious offer with application to himself, saying,“Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). He commands every man “to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God, and our God”2 on the ground of the unlimited offer, and He enables all His own people to believe cordially that He is
their God in offer.
He is also their God in choice. In the exercise of their faith, they choose the Lord Jesus to be their Savior and God in Him, to be their covenant God, saying, “What have I to do any more with idols?” (Hos. 14:8).“This God is our God for ever and ever” (Ps. 48:14). Each of them is enabled to say to the Lord, as the psalmist did, “I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God” (31:14), as if he had said, “Thou art my God not only in offer but in choice (or in preference to every other god); and I, accordingly, have trusted in Thee as my God and placed all my hope and happiness in Thee.”
He is their God also in possession. By believing cordially that He is theirs in offer and by choosing Him for their God and portion in preference to every other god, as well as by trusting that in Christ He will perform the part of a God to them, they take possession of
1. Westminster Shorter Catechism 46.
Him as their God. According to their faith in Him is their possession and enjoyment of Him; and in bestowing Himself on them as their God and portion, He makes over to them all that He is and has and does and will do to be theirs in time and through eternity (Hos. 13:4; Ps. 84:11; 1 Cor. 3:21, respectively). Seeing, then, that in amazing condescension He bestows Himself on them as their God, they are under infinite obligations to devote themselves and all that they are, have, and do to Him as His people. By His being their God, they are firmly bound as well as powerfully excited to love Him supremely and to delight in yielding spiritual and universal obedience to Him. “Because God is the Lord, and our God…we are bound to keep all his commandments.”3 And because it is of sovereign grace that He has been pleased to become their God, they are bound to obey His law as it stands in His covenant of grace—to obey it not that He may become their God but because He already is their God. The covenant right that, according to His gracious promise, they have to Him as their God gives Him an additional claim to them and to all their love and obedience.
5. Their obligation to obey His law as a rule of conduct proceeds like- wise from His being their redeeming God.“In his love and in his pity he redeemed them” (Isa. 63:9). From eternity He, according to the good pleasure of His will, has chosen them to everlasting salvation and has devised the amazing scheme of their redemption. In the immen- sity of His redeeming love and in the exceeding riches of His glorious grace, God the Father has sent His only begotten Son to purchase redemption for them and His adorable Spirit to apply it to them. He has appointed His only Son to answer the demands of His law as a covenant for them that they might be justified, and His Holy Spirit to write His law as a rule on their hearts that they might be sanctified. As means of attaining the inestimable benefits of eternal redemption,
2. Westminster Shorter Catechism 44.
He has moreover favored them with the doctrines, promises, and ordinances of His blessed gospel. Thus, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one Jehovah—stands in the endearing relation of a redeem- ing God to all true believers; Christ the glorious Mediator stands in the relation of a near kinsman, an incarnate Redeemer; and the Holy Spirit in the relation of a sanctifier and comforter to them. And while God the Father and Christ and the blessed Spirit stand in these and other endearing relations to believers, believers stand in all the corre- spondent relations to them. Now, from those relations an additional obligation to love and to good works arises that, instead of impairing, greatly strengthens all the other ties under which believers lie to yield evangelical and universal obedience. Because God graciously redeems them from the hand of all their enemies, and that with an infinite price and by infinite power, they are surely under the firmest possible obligations to “serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of [their] life” (Luke 1:74–75). The notion of a divine redeemer implies that of a creator:“Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things” (Isa. 44:24).
As God’s being the Redeemer of His people, then, implies His being their Creator, in subordination to His glory in the redemption of them, so the obligation to obedience arising from His being their sovereign Creator is implied in and strengthened by the obligation flowing from His being their Redeemer. The redeeming grace of God in Christ is so far from lessening the force of the natural obligation under which believers as creatures lie to love and obey Him that it increases this obligation in the highest possible degree. The great God who is glorious in holiness has not resigned His right of sov- ereign authority over His saints by redeeming them from the law as a covenant and from their spiritual enemies; but on the contrary, He has hereby laid them under further and stronger obligations to uni- versal obedience to the law as a rule. The more illustrious the displays of His glorious perfections and especially of His infinite goodness
are that He has afforded in their redemption, the greater are their obligations to obedience. When they consider that they have the righ- teousness of the incarnate Redeemer imputed to them to entitle them to eternal life and His Spirit dwelling in them to make them meet for the perfection of it, they must surely acknowledge themselves to be under the firmest obligations possible to devote themselves entirely to the service and glory of their redeeming God.
In order to be satisfied of the truth of this, we need only to con- sider the new relations mentioned above, from which arises a set of new duties that no man is capable of performing or has access to per- form unless he previously is a partaker of those relations. Of this class of duties are the faith, love, reverence, and worship that believers owe to Christ the adorable Mediator; to God in the relations of a friend, Father, and God in covenant; and to the Holy Spirit dwelling in them as a quickener, sanctifier, and comforter—also the duties that they owe to fellow saints as members of Christ’s mystical body. From those endearing relations and the inestimable blessings issuing from them, believers cannot but be laid under new and peculiar obligations not only to perform these but all the other duties required of them in the law as a rule of life.
6. The holy will of God, revealed in His law as a rule of duty to believers, lays them under infinite obligations to obedience. The law in the hand of Christ is to His spiritual seed not only the rule but the reason of their duty. They are bound not only to do that which is required in the law and to leave undone that which is forbidden, but they must do what is commanded for the very reason that the Lord requires it and abstain from what is forbidden because He forbids it. “Thou hast commanded us,” says the holy psalmist, “to keep thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep thy stat- utes!” (Ps. 119:4–5). To keep His commandments is, according to the phraseology of Scripture, to do His will. “He that doeth the will of God,” says the apostle John, “abideth for ever” (1 John 2:17). And,
says another apostle,“This is the will of God, even your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3). It is the will not only of God the Father but of God the Son: “I have…ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain” ( John 15:16). It is the will also of God the Holy Spirit, whom believers grieve and even quench when they do not study to advance daily in the love and practice of universal holiness.
The law as a rule is not only a transcript of the infinite purity of God’s holy nature, but it is, at the same time, a declaration of His holy will respecting the duty that His people owe to Him. They are, then, under the firmest ties to keep His holy commandments because it is His will that they should keep them. His will declared in His law is infinitely, eternally, and immutably holy, and therefore, in connection with the other sources of obligation already mentioned, it lays believ- ers under the highest possible obligations to perfect and perpetual obedience of heart and life to His holy law.
7. Once more, the obligation under which believers are to obey the law as a rule arises also from the inexpressible benefit or advantage of holiness to themselves. The law in the hand of Christ is not only holy and just, but it is good. It is good in itself and good for believers. It requires nothing of them but what is good for them to perform and to endure nothing but what is suitable and advanta- geous to them—nothing but what is agreeable and delightful to the new and holy nature imparted to them in regeneration. To be enabled, then, from principles of faith and love and for the glory of God to perform spiritual obedience to such a law is profitable, honorable, and delightful to real believers.
It is profitable for them. “Godliness is profitable unto all things” (1 Tim. 4:8). “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (6:6). “Charge them that are rich in this world, that…they do good, that they be rich in good works” (vv. 17–18). “These things are good and profitable unto men” (Titus 3:8). “To love the Lord our God with all
our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbor as ourselves” is the very perfection of our nature, the highest advantage of which it is capable.4
Holy obedience to the law in the hand of Christ is also honorable to believers. “If any man serve me,” said our blessed Lord, “him will my Father honour” ( John 12:26). And again, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (14:23). What a high honor, what an exalted distinction is conferred on sinful worms of the dust when they are not only beautified with the holy image of God but are advanced to intimate fellowship with Him! Conformity of heart and of life to the divine law is true honor. To resemble Him who is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person is the honor and glory of a man.
To yield obedience to the law of Christ is delightful also to holy souls. As they delight in the law itself, so they take pleasure in yielding spiritual obedience to all its holy commandments. Wisdom’s ways are “ways of pleasantness” to them (Prov. 3:17). Holiness is not only con- nected with happiness but is itself happiness. A man is miserable in proportion as he is sinful, and happy in the same degree in which he is holy. In obedience there is a present and a great reward. True holi- ness is the health and happiness, the peace and pleasure of the soul. It renders the external comforts of the believer doubly pleasant and his heaviest crosses light, his life valuable and his death desirable. The holy commandments are inscribed on his heart; and therefore, he is well pleased with the purity, spirituality, and goodness of them. He delights in meditating on them (Ps. 1:2) and especially on the holiness of them. He counts them an easy yoke, and he chooses and resolves to perform spiritual and perpetual obedience to them. He knows by experience that he is happy in proportion as his inclinations, thoughts, words,
3. Westminster Shorter Catechism 42. See also Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; and Matt.
22:37–40, respectively.
and actions are holy and that he is in his proper element only when he is exercising graces and performing duties.
Now, seeing holiness is, in subordination to the glory of God, profitable, honorable, and pleasant to believers themselves and so is highly beneficial to them, they are bound to make continual progress in the love and practice of it. As they are bound to glorify God as their redeeming God and, in subordination to this, to advance in the enjoyment of Him, so they are under strong obligations, in obedience to His holy law, to advance in conformity to Him and in communion with Him. For they cannot glorify Him but in proportion as they enjoy Him, and they cannot enjoy Him but by such conformity to His image as is the fruit of communion with Him. Let every believer, then, endeavor diligently to advance in faith and holiness according to the law of Christ; for “blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is” ( Jer. 17:7), and “blessed is the man that feareth the LORD, that delighteth greatly in his commandments” (Ps. 112:1).
• REFLECTIONS •
From what has now been said, we may warrantably infer that all they to whom the law of the Ten Commandments is given as the authoritative rule of their life have already received spiritual life as the beginning of life eternal. They have all been quickened by the Spirit of Christ, united to Him as their living head, instated in His cov- enant of grace, and justified for His righteousness imputed to them. And so they have received already the beginnings of eternal life as the gift of God through Him. “He that believeth on the Son hath ever- lasting life” ( John 3:36). And again, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (11:26). The law as a covenant of works says to the dead sinner,“Do this and live; do this for life.” The law as a rule of life, on the contrary, says to the living saint, “Live and do this; do this not for but from life already received.” All they, then, to whom the law as a rule of life in the hand of the Mediator is given already have, in
their regeneration, received the beginning of eternal life prior to their being capable of performing the smallest degree of obedience to the law in that form. They cannot obey the law as a rule of life otherwise than by working from life, but this supposes them to have life previ- ous to such working and as the principle of it. Christ lives in them, and they live by the faith of Him. Their spiritual and eternal life is the life of Christ, life that is wholly derived from Him; and the rule of it by which all its activity is to be regulated is the divine law as the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). Regeneration and vital union with Christ are previously and absolutely necessary to the smallest act of acceptable obedience to the law as a rule of life.
Does the law as a rule of life oblige believers to yield even perfect obedience to its precepts? We ought not to infer from this that it can either justify them before God or condemn them. To justify or to condemn a man belongs to the law as a covenant but not to it as a rule. To be under the law as a rule of life is the privilege only of believ- ers who are already justified freely by grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and who are thereby placed forever beyond the reach of condemnation (Rom. 8:1). The law as a rule cannot jus- tify believers for their obedience to it, for they were perfectly justified in the sight of God before they began their course of sincere obedi- ence; and besides, their obedience is far from being perfect. Neither can it condemn them to eternal wrath for their disobedience, for in their justification they were delivered from condemnation before they began, strictly speaking, to disobey it. It can indeed adjudge them to endure the painful effects of paternal anger but not to suffer the direful effects of avenging wrath ( John 5:24). The law as a rule can direct and bind believers even to perfect obedience, but it cannot either justify them to eternal life or condemn them to eternal death. Their title to eternal life and their security from eternal death have been merited for them by the obedience and death of the last Adam, and they are secured to them by His intercession. This consideration should endear exceedingly the holy law as a rule of duty to the true
believer and should constrain him to rejoice in the thought that he is bound, and in the prospect that to all eternity he shall be bound, by the authority of it to perfect and perpetual obedience (Ps. 119:77; Rev. 22:3).
Hence, also it is evident that the main reason why many true believers have but little holiness of heart and life is that they have much of a legal spirit still remaining in them. It is only with their renewed nature that they obey, or are capable of obeying, the law as a rule. Their unrenewed nature still cleaves to the law as a covenant. In proportion, then, to the degree of corruption remaining in them is that of their legal or old covenant spirit, and the more this prevails in them, the less holy they are. Evangelical or true holiness is a confor- mity of heart and life not to the law as a covenant of works but to it as a rule of life standing in the covenant of grace. Although believers, as we said above, are wholly delivered from the dominion of the cov- enant of works as a rightful sovereign, yet many times it is permitted to reenter their consciences and usurp authority over them. At such times it will venture either to promise eternal life to them for their obedience or to threaten eternal death to them for their disobedience. Now in exact proportion to the degree of their legal temper they are disposed to hearken to the voice of the law in their consciences; and as far as they regard the usurped authority of the law as a covenant of works, they so far disregard the high authority and obligation of it as a rule of duty.
Believer, you cannot advance in holy conformity to the law as a rule but in proportion as you, by the Spirit, mortify your legal tem- per. You may be eminently strict, exact, and uniform in your external performance of every duty; but in as far as a legal spirit prevails and influences your performance of them, they are so far unholy and unacceptable to God. He will accept none of your works but those that are done from evangelical principles and in an evangelical manner. Nothing will more effectually retard your progress in true holiness than either to hope that you shall obtain heaven for your
works of obedience or to fear that you shall be cast into hell for your sins. If you trust your habits of grace rather than the fullness of grace in Christ, if you derive your comfort from your lively frames and reli- gious attainments rather than from Christ and the promises, and if you make either the good dispositions implanted in you or the good works performed by you the ground of your right to trust daily in Him for salvation instead of trusting in Him on the ample warrant afforded you by the offers and calls of the gospel, by doing so you will assuredly decline from holy and cheerful obedience to the law as a rule of life. If instead of coming always as a sinner to the compas- sionate Savior and placing direct confidence in Him for salvation to yourself in particular, you refuse to trust in Him except when you can bring some good qualification or work with you to recommend you to Him, you cannot advance in that holy obedience to His law which is “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:26).
It is no less manifest from what has been said that the state to which believers are advanced on their vital union with Christ is so far from being a state of liberty to commit sin that it is a state in which they are laid under the highest possible obligations even to perfect obedience. If all men are bound to keep the commandments of God because He is Jehovah, the redeemed are especially and still more firmly bound to yield all obedience to them because He is not only Jehovah but is besides their God and Redeemer. None are under such high and strong obligations to holiness of heart and life as the ransomed of the Lord are. He is their God in covenant, and this lays them under the firmest ties to be His obedient, holy people. He is their almighty and gracious Redeemer, and therefore they are not their own but His and are infinitely bound to glorify Him in their bodies and in their spirits, which are His (1 Cor. 6:20).
Why do the saints bitterly bewail the strength of their corrup- tions and the weakness of their graces, the innumerable sins of which they have been guilty, and the want of perfect conformity to the holy law of which they are sensible? Is it not because they feel their infinite
obligations not to merely sincere but even to perfect obedience? And why do they, in their exercise of evangelical repentance, loathe them- selves in their own sight for their iniquities and their abominations (Ezek. 36:31)? Don’t they do it because they are enabled to account their want of that perfect conformity to the law to which they are bound an abominable defect? The wonderful grace of God displayed in their justification and deliverance from the law as a covenant of works, instead of leaving them at liberty to continue in sin, disposes and powerfully constrains them to depart from all iniquity and advance resolutely in universal obedience to the law as a rule of life (2 Tim. 2:19; Titus 2:14). There is not a true believer in the world who does not know this by experience.
What has been advanced may also serve to throw some light on the doctrine of vowing to the Lord and of the obligation that arises from a lawful vow. Believers are far from being left at liberty to vow or not to vow as they please. They are expressly commanded to vow to God and also to perform their vows.“Vow, and pay unto the LORD your God” (Ps. 76:11). “Pay thy vows unto the most High” (50:14). It is clear from the context that the vows mentioned in this last pas- sage are not legal and ceremonial but spiritual or moral vows—vows that believers in all ages of the church are bound both to make and to perform. Isaiah, when predicting the conversion of multitudes in New Testament times, and especially in the millennial period of the church, says,“The Egyptians shall know the LORD in that day…; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the LORD, and perform it” (Isa. 19:21).
Accordingly, the venerable assembly at Westminster teaches that vowing to God is a duty required in the second commandment of the moral law.5 All true converts, in every age of the church, dedi- cate themselves and all that they are, have, and do to the Lord; and in doing so they either expressly or implicitly vow to Him. That is to say, they solemnly purpose and promise that in dependence on
4. Westminster Larger Catechism 108.
promised grace—or that in as far as the Lord Jesus will, according to His promises, enable them—they shall, all the days of their life, yield sincere and increasing obedience to His holy law as the rule of their duty. They do not engage or promise to yield perfect obedience in their present state of imperfection or to perform as much as a single duty in the strength of grace already received, but to perform, in the strength of that grace which is promised and which they trust will be given them, all necessary duties. This is not a particular but a general vow. Neither is it a legal and ceremonial but a spiritual and moral vow. It is the believer’s baptismal vow that, if opportunities are afforded, he will be sure willingly, explicitly, and frequently to renew at the Table of the Lord.
Now, from this vow or promissory oath arises an obligation on the believer to do as he has said. He vows to perform nothing but what he was previously under the firmest obligations possible to per- form; and therefore, though his vow cannot add to the authority of God in His law nor, strictly speaking, strengthen those obligations to obedience which are already as strong as it is possible for them at the time to be, yet it is the source of a new, a distinct, and a superadded obligation. It is not, indeed, a primary source of obligation to obedi- ence like those mentioned above, but still it lays the believer under a new and distinct obligation to fulfill his engagement. He engages or obliges himself, by his own voluntary act, to perform sincerely all those duties to which he is already bound by the law. And the more often he repeats his vow, the obligation arising from it becomes the firmer. If a lawful vow, with respect to things indifferent, founds an obligation, as generally seems to be allowed, much more, surely, must a lawful vow concerning necessary duties be binding. The new obliga- tion to necessary duties, arising from a deliberate and solemn vow to perform them, is not in the least inconsistent with those high obliga- tions to them which flow from the other sources already explained. It is, indeed, associated with these obligations, but it is no disparage- ment to them.
Should any still be disposed to question if a lawful vow respect- ing moral duties can found a new and distinct obligation to perform them, I would only add that it either lays the believer who makes it under a new obligation or it does not. There can be no medium here. If it lays him under an obligation, it must be an obligation posterior to those considered above, and therefore a new and distinct one. If it lays him under no obligation, it will follow that lawful vows do not bind. If they do not bind or impose an obligation, they cannot be broken; and, if so, the saints in all ages have acted an unwise, yea, and a superstitious part when they have confessed and bitterly bewailed their breach of vows. Many professors of religion in our day seem unwilling to vow to the Lord for fear that, by the breach of vows, they should increase the number of their sins. But this discovers both a want of knowledge and a want of sincerity. Matthew Henry, commenting on Isaiah 45:23, says well, “If the heart be brought into obedience to Christ, and made willing in the day of his power…the tongue will swear to him, will lay a bond upon the soul to engage it for ever to him; for he that bears an honest mind never startles at assurances.”6
In conclusion, believers are under every obligation not only to
obedience to the divine law but to free and voluntary obedience. They are bound to yield such obedience as cannot be performed under the law as a covenant of works, as cannot be performed from the principle either of slavish fear or of servile hope. They are under the strongest ties to yield voluntary obedience to the law as a rule of life. They are firmly bound, but it is to free obedience—to the obedience not of slaves or hirelings but of sons and daughters. The Lord Jesus says in His law to them, as on a particular occasion He did to His disciples, “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8). With infinite will- ingness, He obeyed the law as a covenant for them in order that they,
5. [Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), on Isa. 45:20–25 (1166).]
by His grace, might with sincere willingness and, in due time, with perfect willingness obey it as a rule.
The law as a rule of life to believers has, as was said above, no threatening of eternal death and no promise of eternal life annexed to it. No obedience, therefore, is suitable to it but that which is free and voluntary, proceeding from love to God, delight in His will, and concern for His glory. In proportion, accordingly, as the saints are enabled to believe the astonishing love of God with application to themselves and to contemplate the infinitely free grace manifested in redeeming them from the broken covenant of works and in bringing them under the law of the hand of Christ, they yield free and uncon- strained obedience to this law. Made a “willing” people in the day of the Redeemer’s power (Ps. 110:3), they obey willingly, and that not from legal but from evangelical motives. They study to do what the Lord requires because He commands them and in order to please and honor Him. They hate all manner of sin because it is hateful in itself and because He hates it. With holy abhorrence they forsake iniquity because He forbids it and in order that they may not displease or dis- honor Him. And though their obedience will not be absolutely free till it is absolutely perfect, yet the freeness of it will always be in exact proportion to the strength and frequency of their actings of faith and love. When a man is habitually attentive to the manner as well as to the matter of every act of obedience, it is a good evidence that he is dead to the law as a covenant and is brought under the obligation of it as a rule; that the law as a covenant has begun to be erased from his heart and the law as a rule to be written on it.
