MINISTRY IN LONDON

(i) THE LAW OF GOD

David Hutson

John 14: 21; Romans 7: 22; Romans 8: 2-4

I suppose we would all readily admit that there is room for the improvement of state among us - and, of course, that comes home to the one who speaks as much as to any - because what there is collectively depends upon what we are, each one of us. I have been struck by a reference in ministry that the lack of understanding of the element of law leads to moral decline and looseness. We sometimes speak of matters named among us as legality, but perhaps that arises from a lack of understanding of the element of law. That is, we are not set free form the law of sin and of death, from the demands of the law, in order that we might do as we will, though it is true that we are not under law but under grace. But grace brings us into the kingdom of God, and the very fact of it being the kingdom of God involves, as has often been said, the moral sway of God over the soul, and that implies that we are under regulation or, in a sense, it might be said, under law; not the ten commandments but, as Romans speaks of it, the law of God: "For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man". Then it speaks again of being set "free from the law of sin and of death", but that is by "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus", so that we are set free in that way from one law by another law. So we are to be regulated according to the law of God and what suits Him and what is becoming in His house, again, I suppose, connecting with what Paul says as to "how one ought to conduct oneself in the house of God", 1 Tim 3: 15.

But I read first in John's gospel because it comes home to us as to the measure of our readiness of accept law in the sense of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and how much it really is a gauge of our love for the Lord Jesus Himself. He says, "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me". That is, that the evidence of our love for the Lord Jesus would be the keeping of His commandments and, as we know, the beloved apostle Paul says as to what he writes, although specifically in relation to what he was writing to Corinth, but applying generally to his writings, "that it is in the Lord's commandment", 1 Cor 14: 37. So we see generally around us the neglect of the ministry of Paul, as we often speak of it in the profession, and in that we have to include ourselves and test ourselves as to how much we regard it in its detail, for as neglect comes in it produces moral decline and looseness and evidences a lack of genuine love for the Lord Jesus. But here He says, "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me". What an example we have in the Lord Jesus Himself! When the apostle speaks of certain things in detail, applying to us individually in the eleventh of first Corinthians, he says, "Be my imitators, even as I also am of Christ", 1 Cor 11: 1. How wonderful that the Lord Jesus Himself could say prophetically, "Thy law is within my heart" (Ps 40: 8), how He was here Himself in a pathway of obedience and subject to the will of His Father. He who as to His Person had the right to command and who could speak and it was done, yet was here in lowly manhood in perfect obedience to the will of His God and Father. And I believe when He said prophetically that "thy law is within my heart", although it is typified, as we sometimes say, by the commandments being put into the ark, yet it was more than the requirement of the letter of the law, but it was all that was pleasing to God and according to His will so that nothing here that the Lord Jesus did or said, or thought indeed, was ever contrary to the will of His God and Father. How blessed to have Him before us and, as we have been reminded in our readings together about the manna, to feed upon Him in the way He was here in that lowly pathway of humiliation! What an example for us to feed upon in order that we might be set free "from the law of sin and of death" and that we might be here as subject to the law of God.

So it speaks here of the cost at which it has been secured for us: "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God having sent his own Son, in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin" - that is 'as a sacrifice for sin' - "has condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh but according to Spirit9. Well, the righteous requirement of the law would be simply the pursuit of righteousness. That is the first element of the pursuit together in which we are found in fellowship and able to experience what assembly life is in these days as following after "righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart", 2 Tim 2: 22. They would be such as love Him and evidence their love for Him by having and keeping His commandments. As John says, "... let us not love with word, nor with tongue, but in deed and in truth", 1 John 3: 8, so it affects us practically in every relationship. As has been said, righteousness is the maintaining in integrity of every divinely appointed relationship. Perhaps the one in which there is much test in the world and among us, maybe, is the relationship which Paul sets out in the eleventh of Corinthians before introducing the Supper, that is the simple relationship of man and woman in the chain of headship, that the woman's head is the man, the man's head is Christ and Christ's head is God. But the detail of it and the way it is worked out and expressed is given in that chapter, so that the woman is to appear before God as covered, as it says. We would not think of sisters appearing before God, as coming into the assembly, without their heads covered, and yet that is also connected closely and distinctly to the fact of having their hair cut. Some sisters do not think twice, it would appear, about having their hair cut, and yet they would think it absolutely unsuitable to come into the assembly with their head uncovered. Yet the two are connected and these are things which all enter into the matter of the recognition of law and what is the divine requirement and what is suited to the assembly. It is significant that it enters there into the teaching of the apostle immediately before opening up the fact that he had received from the Lord Jesus instructions as the Supper itself, those which we value so much and that which we partake of as an evidence of, and public committal to, the fact that we love Him. And as He says, "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me". These things are to be guarded among us, these relationships, as I have said, the relationship of man and woman. In Christendom around us in the churches they are set aside but let it not be so in any sense among us! May we be concerned that we maintain what is due to the Lord in these things as legitimately subject to Christ, as Paul could say, although set free from the law and its demands in the way that it was imposed upon Israel, which they could never keep and which we could never keep, but we have been set free from it at such cost to God Himself in the death of His Son so that we might be here as governed by "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus".

Well, one feels the burden of these things, beloved, and I am sure it is shared by many, but in view, as I have said, of the improvement of the state among us generally, and in this I am not speaking just of the sisters, but brothers in the exercise of headship should ensure that these things are maintained in their households and so we seek help from the Lord in view of things being more suited to the Lord when He comes in and that there might be more liberty among us. That is another matter which is of concern to us in all our gatherings, especially in relation to approach to God in our hymns and in our prayers. Well, may the Lord help us that there might be more for His own pleasure and for God's pleasure as we gather together - in His Name!