"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do" (Rom. 8:3).
Posted : 8 Aug, 2011 12:06 PM
What is it that the law of God cannot do?
The law has no power to place the sinner in a justified state. In other words, the law cannot fulfill its own righteousness. "You could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39). "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight" (Rom. 3:20).
Nor does the law have any power to give life. "For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law" (Gal. 3:21). The law pronounces the unjustified sinner dead. His religion is dead. His works are dead. His faith is dead. It does not have power to inspire the soul with one breath of spiritual life. Oh, the irrational folly which prompts people to seek spiritual life from a law powerful only as an instrument of eternal death!
Nor does the law have power to make anything whatsoever perfect in the great matter of human salvation�"...for the law made nothing perfect; but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God" (Heb. 7:19).
The law fails to achieve these things. And herein is it weak. The law is holy in its nature, but it is incapable of making the sinner holy. The law is righteous in its precepts, but it cannot justify the ungodly. The law describes the Divine image, but it has no power to transfer that image to the soul.
But let us trace this failure to its proper cause. Where, then, does this weakness of the law of God come from? We reply, not from any inherent defect in the law. "The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good" (Rom. 7:12). Of itself, the law is powerful enough to take the soul to glory. But the apostle supplies the answer�"weakened through the flesh" (Rom. 8:3). He was right to thus shield the dignity of the law and maintain that it has a native force and capacity worthy of him from whom it emanates, and equal to the accomplishment of the great end for which he enacted it. The weakness of the law, then, is to be traced, not to any inefficiency of the instrument, but to the sinfulness of man. The weakness of the law is to be traced, not to the agent, but to the subject.
What an impressive view this gives us of the deep depravity and utter sinfulness of our nature! The corruption of our flesh is so great that it opposes and thwarts the law of God in its great work of imprinting its image upon the mind of man.
Oh, what must be the character and power of that sinfulness that can thus sever the locks of the law's strength and divert it from its sacred purpose! The law would sincerely make us holy, but our depravity foils it. The law would sincerely recall our alienated affections, but our hearts are so utterly estranged from God that its generous effort fails. Thus the law is weakened through the corrupt and sinful flesh.
Let us be deeply humbled by this truth. How entirely it abases the pride of all our fleshly glory!
Where, now, is your native holiness, your boasted pride, and your vaunted worthiness? The law of God�always on the side of purity and love�yearned to bring you beneath its holy and beneficent influence, but your flesh interposed, and it became weak.
