The moral law - Chambers, Oswald
It has been a favourite belief in all ages that if only men were taught what good is, everyone would choose it; but history and human experience prove that that is not so. To know what good is is not to be good. My conscience makes me know what i ought to do, but it does not empower me to do it. For that which i do i allow not: for what i would, that do i not; but what i hate, that do i (Romans 7:15). To say that if i am persuaded a thing is wrong i wont do it, is not true. The mutiny of human nature is that it will do it whether it is wrong or not.
The problem in practical experience is not to know what is right, but to do it. My natural spirit may know a great many things, but i never can be what i know i ought to be until i receive the life which has life in itself, viz. , the holy spirit. That is the practical working of the redemption. Morality is altogether based on utilitarian standards: it is not, a mans conscience will come in every time when he doesn’t want it to. Conscience resides in the essential spirit of a man, not in his reasoning faculty; it is the one thing that assists a man in his unregenerate days. Why are men not worse than they are? The reason is the existence of the moral law of god which restrains men in spite of the impulse towards wrong, consequently you find remnants of the strivings of the moral law where you least expect it because the moral law is independent entirely of the opposition to it on the part of individual men. When gods law is presented beware of the proud self-confidence which says, this is good enough for me, i dont intend to soar any higher.
In dealing with the question of disease both moral and physical, we must deal with it in the light of the redemption. If you want to know how far wrong the world has got, you learn it, not in a hospital, but at the cross. We learn by what it cost god to redeem the world how criminally out of moral order the uni- verse has got.
The guilt abroad to-day can never be dealt with by pressing a social ethic or a moral order, or by an enfolding sympathy for man, while pooh-poohing the demands of a holy god.
Very few of us know what love of god is, we know what love of moral good is, and the curious thing is that
That leads us away from god more quickly than does a terror of moral evil; the good is ever the enemy of the best. Our lawlessness can be detected in relation to the words, come unto me. Liberty means ability not to violate the law; license means personal insistence on doing what i like. If a man is not holy, he is immoral, it does not matter how good he seems, immorality is at the basis of the whole thing. It may not show itself as immoral physically, but it will show itself as immoral in the sight of god (see Luke 16:15).
Intellectual scepticism is good, but a man is to blame for moral scepticism. Every man believes in goodness and uprightness and integrity until he perverts his taste by going wrong himself. Beware of giving way to spiritual ecstasies, it dis- connects you from the great ordinances of god and shakes the very basis of sane morality god has made. There is no such thing as a wrong wrong, only a right that has gone wrong. Every error had its start in a truth, else it would have no power. In the moral realm if you don’t do things quickly you will never do them. Never postpone a moral decision.
Second thoughts on moral matters are always deflections.
It is only when a moral act is performed and light thrown on realities that we understand the relationship between our human lives and the cross of Christ.