Take me to the seventh chapter of Romans. The seventh chapter of Romans. We shall read a few verses beginning with verse one. Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know the law, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband, so long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if while her husband liveth she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. These verses from Romans chapter 7. A very peculiar parable which the Lord used. Paul uses to enforce his argument. He is showing in a new sense how the believer is free from the law. What law is he talking about? Not the Roman law. Not the civil and criminal codes of Great Britain or any other country. It is the moral law he is speaking about, that which was written in the hearts of our first parents and is written in the hearts of all men, though often the lines are blurred and the light is rather dim, yet the knowledge of right and wrong in all rational men who can deny its existence. for all the world acts upon it in greater or less degree. Paul is speaking especially to his Jewish brethren in this particular place. It seems that there's quite a large Jewish community in the capital of the Roman Empire at that time. These people, in their attendance at the synagogue worship, had come into contact with other Jews who had come from Palestine who had been converted. We know that great individuals like Aquila and Priscilla, his wife, were at Rome at one time. And Paul sends his salutations to them in the 16th chapter of this glorious official to the Romans. He speaks of them as being well known in Rome, although they had passed through the phase of being exiled from Rome during, I think, the reign of Claudius, was it? Certainly one of the great Caesars who had driven all the Jews out of Rome at one time, but then they had found their way back again, as this people always seem to do. And it is the Jewish law, the Jewish moral law, the Ten Commandments, that he has particularly in mind when he says, Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know the law, that is, the moral law, as is revealed by the prophets and writers of the Old Testament, which is the only Bible in existence at that time. He is not referring to Gentile people there at Rome who were conversant with the Roman law, but to Jewish brethren who had been converted through the influences which had come from Palestine. There was a continual traffic between Rome and all parts of the empire, both commercial and religious and philosophic, a wonderful institution it was. And these Jews had come to a knowledge of Christ through these travelers who had passed through from time to time. They were also very zealous for the law of Moses. Know ye not brethren, for I speak to them that know the law. how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth. He is using their knowledge of the law in order to enforce the lesson of justification by faith alone. Later on in this chapter he raises the whole question of renaming sin in the believer and shows that even that is no argument against a man being justified by faith. Though he is still in his own eyes a sinner and condemns himself, he is still justified by faith. And all this adds up to an argument which is proved beyond dispute by the Apostle Paul. That we are justified by faith without the deeds of the law. And in this remarkable parable of the woman who had a husband and who couldn't get rid of him except by death, and at last he died and she was at liberty to marry another husband and a better one, he shows by this peculiar and remarkable argument how we have passed beyond the reach of the law. to condemn us. Yes, even the moral law. We look past beyond the reach of the moral law so far as its obligations are concerned. But as touching its power to hold us in bondage, our conscience is now clear because of what Christ has done. And although we are troubled by sin, we are no longer troubled, or we ought not to be, and hope are rightly placed. We are not troubled any longer by the power of our sins to cast us away eternally from the presence of God. We are justified by faith without the deeds of the law. In case anybody should think that this passage raises questions of civil divorce In our time, let me digress a moment just to say a sentence upon that, and it will be that there has never been agreement among Christian men down the centuries, never been agreement or consensus amongst them as to the relationship of the Christian in this question of divorce. John Milton, the great Puritan writer, believed that where the marriage had broken down completely, that a Christian person was entitled, now free from a non-Christian partner, was now entitled to marry again. And that is actually embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith, a thing which I didn't know until fairly recently. That Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones recently got himself into some sort of trouble, well a year or two back, at Westminster Chapel, London, when he gave voice to the same sentiments. In view of the fact that one third of all the marriages in the United States today ends in the divorce courts, and approaching one quarter of all the marriages that take place in Great Britain. I suppose it is a matter that will have to be given thought to among Christian people more seriously than ever we have been obliged to do in all our life hitherto. And further than that I will not go and refuse to be driven. Because the matter is raised here, though Paul is not dealing with the question of divorce and remarriage as such, he is only referring to the state of the law regarding marriage as it stood in normal circumstances and was using it as a parable. Nevertheless, because the question may be in people's minds, as it is going to be in people's minds if present tendencies continue. I just drop these few remarks that people might Start thinking, pondering more deeply upon these matters, because whether we like it or not, we are going to be involved, some day or other. But not just now, please. Let it pass just now. We'll get back to our subject and consider that as a digression, but just a seed germ dropped in your minds to cause you to think and to think seriously about the heathen situation which is now developing in our country and throughout Christendom for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. We find ourselves living once again inside a heathen and not a Christian society. And we've got to waken up. recognize the situation in which we are and that things are not going to remain as they are and we'll have problems and we'll have to deal with them. The Lord grant wisdom to his servants in all places at this time that some light might be shed upon this appalling situation by which we are confronted. Now then Paul's parable is of the woman who in his day was bound by the law to her husband as long as he lived. And although he doesn't say so, yet the parable would require a certain background of incompatibility in this case. That the poor woman was unhappily married, yes even to the law. because the law was a hard husband just as Zipporah said to Moses at the time of the circumcision of her two children after Moses was finishing his sojourn in the wilderness and was coming forth to be the deliverer of his people and she said prophetically A bloody husband thou art to me, because of the circumcision. And so is the law, the moral law, that kind of a husband to your conscience and to your soul and mine, though in itself perfectly righteous, a re-script of the very nature and mind of God. It is a husband which will destroy us. and shed our blood eternally because not the law, not the husband, but the wife cannot keep the compact. We are united to a law which we have broken in other words. We are tied to a husband who is bound in the very nature of things to destroy us because that is the law. No hope can on the law be built of justifying grace. And this is what Paul is getting home to us under the figure of this unbreakable marriage. He says the woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But he might have said to the poor soul, cheer up, death will end all and all my problems will disappear when he goes into the grave. Which is precisely what happened. But if the husband be dead, she is loose from the law of her husband. So then if while her husband liveth, that is while the marriage is what a marriage ought to be, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress though she be married to another man. So far so good, this is quite clear and plain. Thank you Paul, you couldn't have made it more plain and you have made it. If language means language, we understand what you're saying. But what lesson is it that you will raise from it? That's the important thing. Wherefore, my brethren, he goes on, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that ye should be married to another even to him who is raised from the dead that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Now here there has been imagined a very great difficulty. Indeed it is more than imagination, it is a very real difficulty. I suppose for the most of my Christian life, I've always been an ardent student of the Bible, I accepted the conclusion that Paul had reversed the parable. He was inverting the parable and making it say the very opposite of what he intended. Because he seems to be saying that it's not the husband who's died, after all it is the wife who's died. Because he says, therefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. Well, it looks like it, doesn't it, as though we who are married to the law, the law being the husband, we become dead to the law, that is we have died. It's the poor woman who's died, it's the wife who's died. But no, this is not the case. That's not what Paul is saying. The argument is very profound. You may think it's very involved. But the solution is clear and really quite simple. That Christ has become the law on our behalf. Christ has become the law. What, this husband who would destroy us? No. He came down from heaven. The moral law was already here. It was the re-script of the divine nature. There could be only one law, it couldn't be altered. Inasmuch as it is anchored to the nature of God and expresses what God is, there cannot be another law, dear friends, than the one there is. That is the moral law. It's not a matter of convenience, not a matter of utility. It's not a matter which can be changed. You can never change the Ten Commandments. You can explain them if you like, but you can't change them. They're there. They're fixed. And for all eternity. They can never pass away. Because they're what God is. And they simply require that we should be what God made us to be, and that God himself couldn't have made us any different from what he's made us, in our first parent, Adam, that is. He made us a moral being, a moral man, a moral woman, a moral being just like the angels, who were subject to the one great law, and that was the law of perfect love, which is perfect submission, in deep humility and thankfulness and praise to Almighty God. And although it is expressed by Moses in terms of thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, everybody recognizes that in those words there is shining through, shining through the negative, the positive of what we ought to be and what we ought to do. We ought not to do this, but that does not leave us a blank. It is indicating to us what we ought to do before God. For instance, if it says, that thou shalt not kill thy neighbour. All right, we haven't killed our neighbour. But that is not the end of the law. The end of the law is thou shalt do all in thy power to preserve the life of thy neighbour. That's what it means. That his life is to be as precious to you as yours is to yourself. And that you're under obligation to almighty God to do all that you can for his or her welfare so far as it lies within your power. The same applies to all men everywhere. We haven't kept that law, have we? No, we haven't killed our neighbour. We haven't committed murder. We can't go away with a pleasant feeling in our soul saying, oh well, I'm alright, I haven't killed anybody yet. When we may have killed a hundred thousand with our thoughts and our intentions, and killed a hundred million more whom we never felt under any obligation to love or be concerned about in the slightest degree. And yet the whole human family is one family, isn't it? Aye, we're not what we should be. This is the husband we've been tied to. He's really a good husband, but on account of what he is, He can only become a husband who will destroy us in the end. Because not he, but ourselves. We have not kept the marriage bargain. We have broken the marriage reign. We have torn up the marriage compacts. We're the guilty ones. Yet married to the law we are, married to that which can only destroy us because we have broken the bond, the promise which is implied in our very creation. No, we're not exaggerating or over-developing this thing. This is precisely the case as it is. This is divine truth. Now then we find our parable is not inverted. It was we who were doomed to die, and die we do, according to Paul's argument. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. Ah, now we see what he means. He sees another coming in and assuming our marriage obligations to the law. But on the civil, in the civil realm, nobody can do that, can they? Nobody can come and take our place in the marriage home and say, all right, you stay on one side, I'll see this business through. I'll be the husband now, I'll be the wife or whatever it might be. No, there's only one being in the whole universe to whom these words can properly apply and God Himself, who is the law. And the law comes down, incarnates in the Son, the eternal Word of God. And He, in our place, marries the law, which belongs to His own nature, in the sense that He takes those marriage obligations which we have broken upon himself and he says, I will deal with this matter of the law. And the law lays its hands upon him and destroys him. We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ. This is indeed a most tremendous argument. It is indeed a stupendous argument. It is one which is beyond all measurement and weight. But my God, who is the law and gave the law, should himself become married to the law on my behalf and become the guilty party, though he committed no sin. Now no one else can do this but God who gave the law. Those who deny the deity of Christ deny the atonement. They cut the ground from under their feet. If Christ be not God there is no forgiveness, there's no gospel, there's no hope, there's no anything. Christ must be God or you and I are lost, hopeless, without a spark of light in time or in eternity. He must be God because no one else could take this situation upon himself. Only he who is the law and the law giver, only he who upholds the law can on my behalf be married to the law in my human nature and on my behalf suffer the penalty of the broken marriage. Pay the price. meet the cost in his own most precious blood. This is what he has done, so that we could sing in the words of an old-fashioned hymn that some people quarrel with, some good people quarrel with, and which in part might indeed be better expressed, and yet it says something which is true. Free from the law, O happy condition, Jesus has bled and there is remission. by the law and bruised by the fall, Christ hath redeemed us once for all. It's the only way that you'll get free from the law and unless you get free from the law you're condemned by it and will be destroyed by it. You say oh well then we've already spoken about Christ having taken the law so that puts me free, I'm in the clear anyway aren't I? Because Christ in our human nature paid the penalty, therefore payment will not God twice demand? First at my blessed surety's hand and then again at mine? He will not demand of Christ twice? First from Christ and then from me? It all depends, dear friend. This is obviously not the case. The fact that Christ is satisfied by his own death, the demands of the Lord has met all the obligations of truth and righteousness, without which there could be no forgiveness. Does not leave you as a kind of blank in the moral creation of God? Without a husband at all? Without any marriage obligations any longer? That is impossible in God's universe. You've got to be married to somebody. You can't escape that. You're either married to the law and are still on the way down to destruction or you're married to another. But what other is that I can be married to? Well, Paul tells us. Wherefore, my brethren, ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Now we see something wonderful emerging. I've got to be married. If not to one, to the other, there is no neutral ground. There is no land that we can call no man's land in this moral landscape which we know as creation. Married I must be. I can never be single in this moral world. I'm either married to the law or else I have another husband. I am married to him who is raised again from the dead, that I should bring forth fruit unto God. And Paul is saying, we must be married to Christ. But then if you are married to Christ, you are under a new compact. You may be free of your first husband, but you are not free anyway. Because just as sure as he died so far as you are concerned, just so sure are you united to him who rose again from the dead. And to be married to Christ is a very different thing from being married to the law. For the law after all is an abstraction. It tells me about truth. It tells me what I ought to be. And tells me what I am not. It tells me to my face that I have broken the law. And the law cannot mend itself, and the law cannot mend me. We have seen that only the lawgiver can mend this situation by himself satisfying the righteous demand of the eternal law of God in himself. And then, that those who are lost under the law might be married to him who rose from the dead. Now mark this, this marriage is totally different from the first. When I was married to the law, I wasn't married to life. I was simply married to an obligation to keep the law in order that I might have life. But in the Gospel, I am married to life. Life, life, abundant life. Be now a Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Married I must be. Let it be to the one who rose from the dead. And now I find that by grace I am married to life, to eternal life. And this marriage can never be broken. Just as surely might Christ himself die and be obliterated and the Godhead abolish itself and leave the universe in chaos. As that I, married to Christ, can fail of everlasting life. Because I'm married to life. There is nothing in the agreement, there's nothing in the new marriage, which puts me away because it supplies that which I need and makes me in myself what I ought to be. That you should be married to another, even to him that is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. That is, it's a fruitful marriage. And this fruit unto God is the fruit of holiness. Paul had mentioned it in the preceding chapter. Then he'd used another parable about a servant to the master. He said, but now being made free from sin, which was once our master, and become servants to God, whom now we serve, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So in this new marriage I bring forth fruit unto God. Let me put this solemn question in love to every one of us here present. Will your conscience allow you to say this? Will it allow you to say it now? Now you're not answering me by voice. It's just you and your conscience having a dialogue together. Will your conscience let you say this? I am bringing forth fruit unto God. Through the new life that I have in Christ, I am bringing forth fruit unto God. Even the fruit of holiness. Yes, give it a name. Give it a name. Holiness. Holiness. You say, well I'm doing my best. No, that's not the question. Holiness. Holiness. Are you holy? Well, nobody's holy. Don't you make that mistake. There's plenty holy people around. I'm talking to quite a number of them this evening in this place. You say, I don't recognize them as holy. That doesn't matter so long as God does. What is man's opinion? He's not entitled to an opinion. You're not entitled to an opinion on the matter unless you know what it's all about. Oh, every man's entitled to his opinions, says somebody. I once heard Studdard Kennedy say, you know, Woodbine Willie, from the First World War. I spent an hour and a half alone with him. in a house in Wallasey at the time when I was a young reporter. I remember Studdard Kennedy saying, he said, you say, I'm entitled to my opinion. I heard him say this publicly. He says, you're not entitled to your opinion. He said, what is your opinion worth anyway? What do you know about the matter in order to have an opinion upon it? Entitled to your opinion. He said it so effectively that everybody was afraid of expressing an opinion about anything afterwards. Don't blame them either. Very, very searching question, wasn't it? We're not entitled to have an opinion on holiness or who is holy unless we know what it's all about. And some of us claim by bitter experience that we do know something about what it is. In view of the fact that holiness has been our goal for a long time, it has been the greatest trial of our lives that we've not been able to attain to the standard that we've even set for ourselves, let alone what God sets for us. And yet he calls us holy, for he calls us the saints of God. That was the original name of the people of God in the New Testament, the saints. Paul and Apostle, to the saints which are at Ephesus, to the saints which are at Rome, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. And the word saint means a holy one. I met a man in the train one day, he was a very intellectual man. If I'd known who he was I wouldn't have opened my mouth. But I was much younger and at that time thought I was entitled to an opinion. He'd seen me reading my Bible and he drew me out and a companion of mine in the compartment into a conversation. Found out in the end he was one of the professors at Liverpool University. He didn't tell us though. He was a Christian man too. He told me after, he says, I only wanted to know what you would say if I put the position to you. He was speaking about a certain church. rather distinguished itself by being able to manufacture saints, that their calendar was full of saints. Oh, I said, our Protestant calendar is full of saints too, I said. I said, for instance, Saint Martin Luther. I said, how would you consider that? Well, he says, He said, I could find some faults in Martin Luther. I said, I've no doubt you could, I said. And that's one of the proofs that he was a saint. One of God's saints. I said, no, there are plenty of us. He said, what about me? I said, I'm a saint. I said, Saint Charles Alexander. At your pleasure. He smiled. I think he understood what I meant. Then when I discovered who he was, I said, why didn't you tell me before? I said, I kept my mouth shut. No, no, he said, no, he said. He said, I've enjoyed every moment of the conversation. He said, I'm very pleased to have heard what you've got to say. Never met him again, never before or since. You have these encounters, you know, in life. If you want a good encounter, you start reading your Bible in a railway carriage. You'd be amazed at things that have happened to me. I was nearly flung out of the window by an atheist once. I was found reading my Bible in a carriage, in a railway carriage. I've had conversations with all kinds of people, remarkable people, who've made themselves known. Also in traveling in aircraft in the United States, reading my Bible, a person sitting next to me, turned out to be a Christian and we wouldn't have known each other had it not been for the Bible that had spoken for itself and shown that we were of the same mind. Remarkable things happen when you read your Bible in certain places. You try it sometimes. Try it. And the Bible tells us who are the holy ones, the saints of God, the saints. Yes, even though I hardly dare say it now, not with the same boldness I once did, Saint Charles Alexander. And yet I've got to confess it must be true because I'm married to Christ. Well, you must think something of yourself if you think you're a saint. No, no. I never thought less of myself than when I discovered that I was a saint, for a saint is one of the Lord's chosen ones whom he has put upon one side and said, these are mine, these are mine. And when I finish with them in that eternal glory, they'll shine like the stars in the kingdom of my grace. We shall shine as the stars of the morning, with Jesus the crucified one. We shall rise to be like him forever, eternally shine as the sun. We are the light of the world, says the scripture to the people of God. The only light this world has is the Lord's His holy ones, that means those whom he separated from the mass of mankind for himself. Why did he do that? What was there about them? Nothing about them any more than anybody else. Further than that I can't go. They were as bad as anybody else and in some cases worse. The dying thief rejoiced to save. That fountain in his day. Without any merit at all, any possibility of ever doing anything for Christ. For he was going to be dead in another hour. He would never come down from that cross till he was dead. Therefore he could never be a missionary, he could never do anything. He could never testify to anybody else. He had neither got any good works from the past, that's why he was being crucified as a malefactor. nor any prospect of doing good works in the future, but he went to heaven. This day thou shalt be with me in paradise without a good work to his name. It's only because his heart had been changed by divine grace and the Lord in a wondrous way, even at that awful hour, separated him from the mass of sinful humanity and said, you're going to be mine and you are mine. and I'll meet you in paradise today, and you'll be with me there forever and forever. Saint Thief. He ought to be in the calendar too. We don't know his name, but call him Saint Thief, Saint Robber, because he was transformed in a moment of time and married to another, even to him who was about to be raised from the dead. And so it is that those who got rid of their first husband through faith in Christ do not find themselves in a position in which, well, now I can please myself where I go. I haven't got a husband any longer, I'll now have a look round and see what kind of husbands there are. No, no. From the moment we got rid of the old husband, by faith in Christ and repentance, we found ourselves already married to him who rose from the dead. And in fact, we didn't change our husband. It's only the form of things which changed. Before, there was the law that was against us, and now, I see in Christ the law fulfilled. And therefore my husband is pleased with me and will be kind to me. Before, my husband was cruel to me. Cruel to me because he had to be cruel. That's all he had. He was just fulfilled.