Love in the Schooling of the Law.
Over all righteousness before men the will has power, because it is a righteousness of outward acts; but the will has not power over the desires and affections, in other words over the superior faculties of which it is a servant. It can produce good deeds to a certain extent, but it cannot produce good tendencies. Our actions are in our own hand, but our hearts are not. And God's law, which is summed up in one command, "Thou shalt love," regards not outward actions, but the direction of the heart. Therefore the will, which is powerful over so many things that lie in its department and beneath it, is utterly powerless in this, which lies out of its department and above it. It cannot fulfil the law of God. Consider how the law prepared men for the redemption of Christ.
I. Take, first, the case of the heathen, who live without a written law. In them the Fall reached its utmost depth. Conscience, bewildered and degraded, almost ceased to testify to the law of love. These were alive without the law; they knew no spiritual want, sighed for no deliverance; their being had sunk so low that the higher place from which they had fallen was hidden from them. But now comes in the written law, with its requirements, which the will of man cannot fulfil, its revelations of the higher place of love and freedom, its burdens of guilt on the awakened conscience. The sinner is by the law of God awakened and enlightened. He sees God as his object. But out of all the workings of the law in the sinner springs up not one plant of righteousness, nothing but a widening and deepening conviction of guilt, and incapacity, and danger, and death.
II. But now let us mark the effect on this man as a being of the future. To sit down in despair and die is a rare exception to his general constitution; place him in misery, and he sighs for deliverance. And the sinner, convicted under God's law, proved incapable of fulfilling it, is thereby made to cry out for deliverance. The awakening of the desire for good proves that sin was not his natural state, but a corruption of his nature. This sorrow points to joy, this hunger to satisfaction, this thirst to refreshment. For we cannot for a moment suppose that the good and loving God should awaken by His law this sense of misery and this desire for deliverance in His creatures merely to torment them and to drive them to despair. Therefore the law of God, by its very office of convicting of sin and bringing about a longing for deliverance, does, in fact, contain, wrapped in its depths, a promise of pardon and a prospect of deliverance.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. iv., p. 100.
References: Galatians 3:24. H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 70; Ibid., Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 385; Ibid., Penny Pulpit,No. 1130; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 78. Galatians 3:24; Galatians 3:25. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1196. Galatians 3:25; Galatians 3:26. Homilist,vol. vii., p. 26. Galatians 3:25-29. W. Spensley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 61.Galatians 3:26. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 78. Galatians 3:26; Galatians 3:27. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 357. Galatians 3:26-28. Bishop Westcott, Ibid.,vol. xxvi., p. 113; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 273.Galatians 3:26-29. Bishop Westcott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 222.