APPENDIX 1

The Moral Law

A useful example of Dr. Lloyd-Jones approach and teaching methods is provided below from notes taken by a member of a London discussion group.*

1. INTRODUCTORY
    

   The first necessity is to dismiss several of the more mistaken views which have grown around this subject. Especially it is necessary to be clear concerning the intention and status of the Law as given on Sinai (recorded in Exodus Chapter 20 and in the other books of Moses, that is, the Hebrew Torah) and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel Chapters 5-7.^#

    

2. MISUNDERSTANDINGS

There have been four main misconceptions –

(a) The Law of Sinai has been regarded as addressed only to Israel and as being obsolete in reference to other peoples today.

(b) On the contrary, the Sermon on the Mount, with its Beatitudes, has been taken as if it were applicable to the world at large. But our Lord addressed it to his disciples – the children of the kingdom of God.

(c) Others by a strange use of distinctions in biblical history based on different ‘dispensations’ have postponed the real application of the Sermon to a future completed kingdom of God.

(d) But perhaps the most damaging misunderstanding of all is the liberal theologian’s claim that he ‘holds to the ethics of the Sermon and of Christianity in general, but no longer accepts the doctrines’. The point here is that, as the Bible presents the matter, the ethics plainly arises from the doctrine.

Then there are several other distortions of which the chief may be called:

III. FALSE PATRONAGE

(a) Moses is often acclaimed (especially in a medical setting) as ‘the best medical officer of health, or community physician, the world has yet seen’ and as having had a unique insight into the problems of public health. But as soon as one mentions Moses’ God, the latter seems regarded as just some tribal deity.

(b) In a similar way, Jesus of Nazareth is applauded as ‘the wisest teacher’ and the ‘greatest prophet’ that the world has known. His sayings or ‘maxims’ are an excellent source for telling quotes and apposite proverbs! But as soon as he talks of the purpose of his coming and the supreme aim of his life, that is quite another matter. They do not wish to go into doctrine.

This brings us to certain considerations which must be borne in mind. These are:

IV. TWO IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS

(a) God’s Moral Law is of lasting and universal validity. It was already present for Adam and the patriarchs, who followed him. It will last on until the end of the human race. It remained in Adam after the Fall as part of the defaced ‘image of God’. Traces of the original Moral Law are still in man’s heart and he has to come to terms with it unless he (as Paul says) ‘holds down the truth in unrighteousness’ so that his conscience becomes ‘seared’.

(b) The Law in Sinai, whilst initially addressed to Israel, embodies for all time something of the character of God and what (as Paul says) ‘is holy and just and good’ for man. It codifies the essential principles of the Moral Law, of which the remains are in man’s heart. (‘The Law’ is not just the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus 20, but its minor principles are also illustrated and applied throughout the five books of Moses.)

The crucial point in the history of the Moral Law comes when the New Testament (as the Book of the New Covenant) brings before us the important change which came about through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. He lived under the Law and died under the Law. As one result there came:

V. AN OFFICIAL DISUSE OF PARTS OF THE LAW

(a) The Political Law of the Hebrews ceased with Israel’s nationhood at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70.

(b) The Ceremonial Law of the Hebrews ceased when Christ had made ‘one sacrifice for sins for ever’ and animal sacrifices were no longer required.

(c) But the Moral Law (as codified, for example, in the Ten Commandments) remained in force. Our Lord distinctly says that he did not come to destroy the Moral Law but to fulfil it, and to make it possible (under the New Covenant) for his disciples to keep it. Again, St. Paul reiterates that it is ‘holy, and just and good’.

Hence, it is important to be quite clear about the way in which the apostles saw the relation between the timeless universal Moral Law as codified under the Old Covenant and the Sermon on the Mount as given on the eve of the New Covenant.

VI. THE RELEVANCE OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

(a) The leaders of Israel, the Pharisees and Sadducees, regarded their Law as something external to themselves to be obeyed, i.e. a Code to be meticulously applied by a series of rule-of-thumb practices. The Sermon, on the other hand, comes in at a different angle and goes to the heart of the matter on each point. It is concerned rather with a disciple’s motives and the disposition of his heart towards God and his neighbour. In the words of Jeremiah (Jer. 31: 33), God says in reference to the New Covenant –‘I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.’

(b) When our Lord in the Sermon uses the emphatic ‘but I say unto you’, he does not mean that he is abrogating the timeless Moral Law. He is rather emphasizing the fact that God is concerned with motives and disposition. ‘Man looks on the outward appearance, God looks in the heart.’

(c) In effect our Lord goes back to the time when God’s Moral Law was clearly written in the heart of man ‘as the image of God’ and he is concerned to stress the new writing on the hearts of the children of God – with their new natures received from new birth in Christ.

(d) Again, it must be clearly seen that the ‘Second Table of the Law’– i.e. the last six commandments dealing with duty to one’s neighbour – was given in the context of the First Table, that is, of duty to God. Similarly, the second section of the Sermon dealing with love towards neighbours is on the basis of ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind’.

Neither the requirements of the Moral Law in the Commandments, or in the Sermon, should be separated from the Giver, and the basis on which they were given.

(e) In other words the requirements of the Sermon on the Mount cannot be kept apart from what the New Testament has to say about regeneration of heart, purification of motive and a new dynamic provided by the gospel. Obedience requires as its corollary the inward presence and work of the Holy Spirit regenerating, purifying and enabling.

(f) It is clear (and many well-disposed men of good will readily recognize this) that the results of the Second Table of the Law and its New Testament parallel in the Sermon on the Mount are very good for the community’s general welfare. But New Testament ethics cannot be applied (in any detail) to mankind in general. For the Sermon was clearly addressed to disciples in the context of the teaching of the New Testament. Excellent as it is (and with all its potential for the good of mankind) both in theory and practice it is embedded in the basic teachings of the gospel.

The central problem, therefore, is concerning–

VII. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE SERMON

(a) Many members of the public, especially Jews, Roman Catholics and (to some extent) Muslims, will agree that the Second Table of Old Testament Law is for the good of society. Primitive societies may show also survivals of the Moral Law in their hearts. The Second Table of the Law, however– even though it is of universal validity and application – to become effective requires to be kept in its original setting of duty to God. The Second Table cannot be properly applied without obedience to God’s claims in the First.

(b) How, then, can this matter be put to a non-Christian? A public figure recently said on television that he still held to the ethics of Christianity whilst sitting loose to its doctrines. But can he?

In the first instance, a man does not have a true view of self without seeing himself as God sees him. When he breaks down in trying to meet the Second Table’s requirements he usually does not recognize the true source of his weakness and failure. The ultimately missing factor is a true recognition of God and an adequate dynamic in the light of the First Table.

(c) Emil Brunner in his Divine Imperative puts the matter like this. ‘Our grandfathers had the full Christian position, holding to both Tables of the Law and both parts of the Sermon. Their sons sought to hold on to the Second Table and its beneficent effects, whilst letting the First Table imperceptibly slip from them. The fathers thought that they could pass on the ethics without the doctrines, but now the grandsons have lost both the ethics and the doctrines.’

(d) The Victorian evangelicals had one weakness which has accentuated these losses. Whilst they believed what the Bible taught and desired to take proper action to overcome evil in all its forms, they made the mistake of tackling each evil separately. So, in the event, they organized Temperance Societies and then a separate society for every imaginable evil or need! But you cannot efficiently isolate each sin for national correction. Also, the strategy was ineffective because it tended to move them away from the all-essential inward motivation and spiritual dynamic with which the pioneers started. In contrast, the 18th and 19th century religious revivals went to the doctrinal heart of the matter. John Wesley told his followers to aim at the head of the serpent and the coils would look after themselves. When people and committees were deeply affected by a truly Christian conversion and inward renewal, both individual and public sins soon began to decline in power and extent. The central doctrine is the indispensable source of the dynamic of the ethics.

(e) St. Paul was very definite about this matter of the perpetual influence of the Moral Law in the hearts of men. He refers to ‘the Law of God written in their heart ... excusing and accusing’ (Rom. 2: 15), and goes on to explain that it was not only the Jews, but also the Gentiles, who had the Law in their hearts. We can point to its codification in the Second Table of the Law as that which men ought to accept and do. But from whence will they derive the adequate motivation and obey it? Life on this plane is portrayed in the Sermon on the Mount. It is here that our Lord’s teaching becomes plain that to meet the requirements of the Sermon needs a new heart, a new motivation and a new dynamic. It arises out of ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Then, there is the question of Natural Law and its relevance to man’s responsibility and actions. This phrase needs to be carefully defined because the term is frequently used in more senses than one. Also, if applied out of its context, it is liable to cause more confusion.

VIII. THE MEANING OF NATURAL LAW

(a) In modern times the term natural law has most commonly been used to refer to the physical laws of nature. Utilitarianism, Darwinism and Marxism have attempted to evolve an ethic appropriate to these physical laws in the social sphere. But in older theology the term was used for the common denominator of ethics which were left to man after the Fall. Augustine believed that the ‘image of God’ had been so damaged that the residual awareness of God and awareness of moral duty were comparatively small, so that divine revelation and grace were needed before there could be a right use of reason and moral responsibility. The mediaeval Church followed Thomas Aquinas, who used the term natural law in a special sense in which (based on an Aristotelian view of man) he regarded the damage to ‘the image of God’ in man as having been considerably less than Augustine, and he affirmed that man was capable of the right use of his unaided reason and moral responsibility. Revelation and grace were supplementary and corrective of this.

(b) The Bible, and especially the Epistle to the Romans Chapter 2 and Jude, does recognize a natural law to the extent that in fallen man there was still a surviving element of ‘the image of God’, for example, in man’s awareness of the Divine Being and the promptings of his conscience. Try as men may to overcome it, conscience still continues to protest against injustice and other wrongs until it becomes ‘seared’ and silenced.

(c) The primeval law in man’s heart is an elementary form of the Moral Law in so far as the latter enshrines what in principle God has set in man’s heart. This is basic to St. Paul’s argument in Romans 2. When showing ‘the new and living way’ of the gospel he seeks to demonstrate the value and glory of the gospel for both Jew and Gentile. To do this he demonstrates that the Jew has the Law in a formulated code and the Gentile the Law in an unformulated form in his conscience. But both, in any case, continue to break it. Hence, the need for, and the glory of the gospel.

(d) Lecturers on comparative religion constantly assert, because some elements of the Moral Law are found amongst primitive peoples, that these principles as formulated did not come through God to Moses in the written Law. They suggest rather that the Jews had a genius for religion and Moses as one of their major prophets simply refined what was common to primitive man into the Jewish Law. If we follow the Bible, however, we must claim that both forms of the Moral Law came from God, the residual inner principle in the hearts of primitive people and the codified Law on Sinai.

IX. THE SERMON AND MOTIVATION

(a) It must be carefully noticed that Moral Law says ‘Thou shalt do no murder’. This must be kept technically separate in thought from the verb to ‘kill’. People in this context continually keep talking of ‘killing’, which – alas – is sometimes necessary in the course of maintaining Law and Order. The problems of pacificism and euthanasia, however, must be discussed in another context than that of murder, which is the point in the Law and the Sermon.

(b) This distinction is accompanied by others in the interpretation of the Sermon which primarily is concerned with motives. It asks whether you hate someone in your heart? – for, if so, this is the seed of murder. Similarly throughout the Sermon, we must continually focus our attention on the motives illustrated and the context of what is being said. The rights and wrongs of some of the modern legal matters and the problems of medical ethics must be kept in their respective appropriate settings.

(c) The Pharisees and Sadducees were actually convinced that they were successfully keeping the Moral Law, and some were inclined to boast about this. Their interpretation of the Law was demonstrably wrong, as our Lord set out to prove. He asks: ‘Do any of you use such words as "Raca" or "You fool"? Do any of you know lust?’ He, then, shows how these are breaches of the Law because they are really incipient hatred and adultery. These religious people had mechanized the Law into a system of rule-of-thumb habits and overlooked the motives. (Some pacifists, and other pressure groups who are careless interpreters of Scripture, tend to do the same sort of mechanizing of Scripture today.)

(d) The position is that all men are responsible before God to attempt to reach the first milestone. This includes both those who have the unformulated residual Moral Law in their hearts, as well as those who have its codification in the Second Table of the Law of Sinai. Paul is quite definite in this assertion of those facts. But Christians, because of Table I of the Law – that is, the God whom they love and serve, and the Gospel of the New Covenant into which they have now come – should hasten to apply themselves with zeal to the practice of the Sermon on the Mount – their motivation and dynamic is the love and service of God through the aid of the Holy Spirit.

SUMMARY

The chief points to be kept in mind are:

l. The Sermon on the Mount can only be applied fully to the Christian, in the light of his regeneration in Christ and his new motivation which arises from his love for God and his devotion to his service.

2. Many men, however, will be ready to consider the general provisions of Table II of the Law of Sinai, and also the general ethical aims and points of the Sermon. If these could be enforced, they are obviously very salutary for a community, and the lawgivers also would be interested.

3. But, it must be carefully shown that men cannot just have the ethics of the Sermon, without its doctrine, that is, without its roots in the love of God.

4.Today in the breakdown in law and order, and the undermining of general community life, even the advanced materialist politicians are afraid of the growing vacuum. They may perhaps be induced to see that the ideal for community ethics is a truly Christian Society, based on the Law and the Sermon. At the same time, however, it must be made clear that the beneficient results are impossible to achieve without the control of Table I of the Law in which God declares – ‘Thou shalt have no other gods but Me’; and without the basis of the ethics of the New Covenant as set out in the Sermon.

5. Today there is everywhere a widespread listlessness, loss of interest and loss of nerve. For many students and other adolescents life has become meaningless. Morals – that is, the concept of Moral Law – cannot be suspended, as it were, in mid-air. It needs the rock-like foundation of faith in God on which to build the kind of life for which so many crave. All else ends in atrophy and disillusion.

* From the introduction and summing up of a discussion on the relevance today of the moral law of the Old Testament held at the London Medical Study Group of the Christian Medical Fellowship on December 7th, 1959.

^# One of the most helpful of Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ publications for medical practitioners has been Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Intervarsity Press). It is worth its cost for the introduction and definitions alone.

APPENDIX 2

Bibliography

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was primarily a preacher and wished to remain so. To safeguard his persuasive speaking gift and main strength, which was clarity of exposition and authority in the pulpit, he resisted numerous pressing invitations from admirers and publishers to write. This he regarded as a quite different gift, the use of which could easily spoil the particular ability of a preacher. Hence, it was not until the approach of his retirement that he found the time and inclination to make ready the manuscripts and to correct the proofs for the considerable number of volumes which eventually came to be completed. Earlier, however, through the industry of several members of his congregation and the increase of technical means for recording, some of the important series of addresses were produced. Several of these have proved very useful to members of the medical profession, especially:

1958 Authority (Addresses from an International Conference, Canada, 1957), Inter-Varsity Press.

1959 Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Inter-Varsity Press. (First published in two volumes and now one vol. of 658 PP.)

1959 Conversions: Psychological and Spiritual (booklet), Inter-Varsity Press. (A reply to Wm. Sargant’s Battle for the Mind.)

1965 Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, Pickering & Inglis.

1970 Daily Readings from the Works of Martyn Lloyd-Jones Selected by Frank Cumber, Hodder & Stoughton.

1971 Preaching and Preachers, Hodder & Stoughton. (Lectures in Westminster Theological Seminary.)

1970-75 Expositions of the Epistle to the Romans, Banner of Truth Trust. Chapters 3:20-8:39 (six volumes) – the keys to the study are in Vol. I (3:20-4:25) and Vol. II (Chapter 5).

Readers with a special interest in church history and the Puritans will find great stimulus in Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ papers given at the ‘Puritan’ and (later) Westminster Conferences 1958-1978. On pages 103-116 of the 1978 volume –Light from John Bunyan and other Puritans will be found a complete index to the twenty Conference Reports, with a list of the subjects of Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ papers. (£1.05 from the Hon. Secretary, the Westminster Conference, c/o Westminster Chapel, Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6BS.)