S. WHAT SHALL I DO TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE? PART 1.

WHAT SHALL I DO TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE? PART 1

I am fifty-three years old today. I desire to celebrate the anniversary by a discussion of the plan of salvation in answer to the momentous question: What shall I do to inherit eternal life? The discussion will be predicated on two paragraphs of Luke’s gospel, one in Matthew 10:1-42 and one in Matthew 11:1-54. The two together outline one great subject in its several parts.

Commencing with Matthew 25:10, I read: "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted Jesus." "Lawyer" here does not mean a pleader before a court, but an expounder of the Jewish law, which was both civil and ecclesiastical. The word, "tempt," may have a good or bad sense. My judgment is that the sense here is good. It means, "to try." "And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted Jesus, saying, ’Master (that means teacher), what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said unto him, ’What is written in the law?’ i.e., you are a lawyer and your business is to expound the law. "What is written in the law? How readest thou?"

"And he answering said, ’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.’"

Well, that is written in the law. It is a summary of the Ten Commandments-not a New Testament summary, but the synopsis given by Moses himself, not all in one place, but in two different books of the Pentateuch.

Here it is a quotation: "It is written in the law that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself." "And Jesus said unto him, ’Thou hast answered right. Do this and thou shalt live.’"

Mark that answer: "Do this and thou shalt live." "But he, desiring to justify himself said unto Jesus, ’And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus made answer and said: ’A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who both stript him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.’" That road from Jerusalem to Jericho was down hill all the way, the grade very steep and in certain parts of it almost a canyon through the mountains; a very narrow passway, with dangerous rocks on each side, honey-combed with caves. From time immemorial robbers have harbored in those caves and attacked travelers passing over that road from Jerusalem to Jericho and from Jericho to Jerusalem. In the time of the Crusaders an organization was formed called the "Knights Templars" for the sole purpose of establishing their headquarters on that road and protecting travelers, keeping robbers off. That organization of the Knights Templars increased and changed its original form until it became the mightiest organized power of chivalry at one period, and of rascality at another period. Kings found it necessary to the peace of their realms to banish them. The romance readers will recall Scott’s vivid description in "Ivanhoe" of their expulsion from England by Richard the Lionhearted. In modern times we have the Knight Templars, a continuation of the old organization, but with different objects.

Here it is well to note in passing that the illustrations of Christ, while always supposititious, are always natural. His illustration is always a verisimilitude of real life; the thing could have actually happened just as He stated.

"And by chance a certain priest was going down that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when. he saw him, he was moved with compassion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out two pence and gave them to the host, and said, ’Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee.’ Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor to him that fell among the robbers? And he said, ’He that showed mercy on him.’ And Jesus said unto him, ’Go, and do thou likewise.’" So says the paragraph of the tenth chapter. The paragraph from Luke 11:1-54, continuing the subject, commences with the thirty-seventh verse: "Now as He spake, a Pharisee asketh Him to take breakfast with him and He went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not dipt himself before breakfast. And the Lord said unto him (replying to his thought), ’Now do ye Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter; but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. Ye foolish ones, did not He that made the outside make the inside also? But rather give for alms those things which are within and behold, all things are clean unto you.’ "Do you recall how the King James version reads on that?" ’But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.’ "But this reads:" ’Give for alms those things which are within and all things are clean unto you.’ "There is no doubt in anybody’s mind as to the words in the original Greek - ta enonta. The same word was before the King James translators and the Canterbury revisers, but that word grammatically can be derived from either one of two words, eni or eneimi. If from the first word it means "such things as ye have," but if from the other it means "those things that are within." Now, where the grammatical construction favors one derivation as much as another, you go to the context to determine the true word from which it is derived; and the context here unquestionably shows that the Canterbury revisers derived it from the right word.

I recall many books which I have read and hundreds of things which I have heard, predicating an awfully false theology upon the King James rendering, "Give alms of such things as ye have and all things are clean unto you," that is, if you are benevolent, if you are open-hearted, why the Lord will forgive everything else; and the way to get to heaven, the way to inherit eternal life, is just to give alms. But that is far from the meaning of Jesus. To resume the reading:" ’But woe unto you Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and every herb, and pass over judgment and the love of God; but these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Woe unto you Pharisees! for ye love the chief seats in the synagogues and the salutations in the market places. Woe unto you! for ye are as the tombs which appear not, and the men that walk over them know it not.’ And one of the lawyers answering said unto him, ’Master, in saying this thou reproachest us also.’ And He said, ’Woe unto you lawyers also! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you! For ye build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. So ye are witnesses and consent unto the works of your fathers; for they killed them, and ye build their tombs. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles; and some of them they shall kill and persecute; that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary: Yea, I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation.’"

What an awful thing is God’s dealing with a nation or with a race! Just as He deals with an individual, so with a nation or the whole race. And how the long treasured wrath that has been massing up from the beginning of a nation’s history until its iniquity is full, bursts over the barriers, and on that last generation falls all of the accumulated woe. Instance the French Revolution. Louis XVI was about the most moderate, the most amiable, of all the Bourbon kings, and yet on him and in his day came the doom that the predecessors of his dynasty had garnered up. "Woe unto you lawyers! for ye took away the key of knowledge!" Not the key that unlocks knowledge, but the key, knowledge; knowledge itself is the key. "Ye took away the key." What key? Knowledge. "Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." So ends the second paragraph. The subject, of discussion today is vital and fundamental; indeed, the most important ever presented to human consideration, and I would deal with it in the simplest and clearest form possible, but I want to discuss the whole subject. I want to show you that this paragraph from Luke 10:1-42 and the paragraph from Luke 11:1-54, are but parts of one whole subject, and that subject is a question concerning eternal life ¾ what a man shall do to inherit eternal life. Taken together they disclose the ways by which men seek to obtain eternal life, and how any plan to which a man is wedded, necessarily influences his own character either helpfully or hurtfully, and is bound to influence his own community helpfully or hurtfully. But such extensive discussion is impossible within the limits of a half or three-quarters of an hour, and hence my proposition is to devote to this subject both the morning and evening services, and I invite all present now to come tonight and hear the end of it. I want you to have the whole subject before you.

I ask you to note first our Lord’s method of dealing with men. He always addressed himself to the man’s own standpoint in such a way as to awaken thought and produce self-conviction. Here was an expounder of the law relying upon his conformity to the law for eternal life; an expounder of the law who wanted to call out and try Jesus on this standard. Hence he comes with this most important of all questions: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Oh, what a question!

What a question for you, for me, for anybody, for everybody! "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Or, "What shall I do to escape eternal death?"

Jesus says to him, "What does the law say?" You are a lawyer. It is your business to expound the law. "What does the law say?" "Well, the law says this: ’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength and with all thy mind and with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.’" Jesus replied to the man, "You have answered right. That is what the law says. That covers the scope of all the commandments. That summary comprehends every detail, not only of the decalogue but of every other statute, civil, ecclesiastical, ceremonial, or of any other kind. That is the whole of it. On these two hang all the law and the prophets."

What was the question? "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Mark the answer ¾ "The law says thou shalt love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. Do this and thou shalt live." Do this and thou shalt live. You are standing on the law. You are an expounder of the law. You are seeking justification before the law from your standpoint. Here is your chance. Do this and thou shalt live. Fail to do this and thou shalt die.

Just here comes up a question. As men now are ¾ I am not talking about how Adam was, but as men now are ¾ is this a practicable way of life? That is, is it possible for eternal life to be obtained this way? And the answer to it is prompt and clear: "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God." That makes it absolutely impracticable. There is God’s inspired declaration, that while it remains true if a man will do what the law requires, that he shall inherit eternal life, yet under present conditions it cannot be done. No man can obtain eternal life that way. And here arises a question in morality. Why then did Jesus say, "Do this and thou shalt live?" Why did He answer the question that way? For this reason ¾ it was the object of Jesus to convict that man. That man did not think he was a sinner. Jesus knew he was. The Bible says that by the law is the knowledge of sin. And Paul says, "I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived and I died." Now that man stood before Jesus without any consciousness that he was a lost soul, and there in that delusion, he was going along a road that he thought would certainly land him in heaven, and the only way on the earth to cause him to turn from his hopeless and doomed path was to produce the conviction in his mind that he was a lost sinner. Hence Jesus says, "This is what the law says. Do it. Come and look in this mirror and let it, as you look, reflect back yourself to your sight, that you may see that you are not loving God with all your heart, and with all your strength, with all your mind, and that you are not loving your neighbor as yourself." In other words you turn Mount Sinai, trembling with the touch of God’s foot and crested with the fire that shows His presence, and throbbing with the thunders of His power, you turn Mount Sinai over on a man not to save him, but to bring him to Calvary. You see Moses as a schoolmaster unto Christ. When he stands there and says, "I am for the law. I am going to stand on my own record. I am going before the bar of God at last, and according to what I have done I will seek justification." Now the sooner you get that man to see what is the heart, the spirit, as well as the exceeding broadness of the divine commandment, the better for him. That is the object that Jesus had.

We notice the next point. What sort of a man seeks justification that way? Let us take a look at him. Paul describes him. He says he is a man, busying himself to establish his own righteousness; an exceedingly active man, going to and fro, concerning himself exceedingly much, to establish his own righteousness. Now, when you know that it cannot be done, when you know that if he persists in walking in that road that he is lost, what ought to be the attitude of your mind toward him? What feeling in your heart, you that are better informed, should be excited by a contemplation of this man’s hopeless quest, of this man’s despairing activity? There ought to be excited in your mind something kindred to what was excited in Paul’s mind when he looked at such a man. Well, how was it with him? He is a good example because he was once right there himself. There was a time when he was exceedingly zealous after the law, trying to establish his own righteousness. There was a time when he thought that from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet there was not a spot in him. And when the awful revelation came to him it so impressed his heart that when he looked on anybody else in that same dangerous condition, how did he feel?

Let his own words speak for him: "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh." (Romans 9:1-3.) "Brethren, my heart’s desire and supplication to God is for them, that they may be saved." (Romans 10:1.)

Such a picture as that is enough to excite in the mind of one who is better informed the deepest commiseration. It is enough to put him down on his knees and induce him to cry out unceasingly, with an importunate supplication, "O God, open that man’s eyes; there is death in that road. There is no life in that road. I pray for him." Now, why is it that a man cannot be saved that way? Let us see if we cannot get right to the very bottom of it. Why is it? I cite three insuperable difficulties. Any one of them is insuperable. If there were just one of these three it would he impossible for him to inherit eternal life that way. What are they?

First, the carnal mind is enmity against God, and not subject to the law of God, neither can be. What is this way of salvation? It is to do what the law says and live. And what does the law say? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." But here is a man trying to live that way whose mind is enmity against God and not subject to the law of God, and cannot be subject to the law of God. What is his chance? With his fallen, unrenewed nature how can he love God, love him with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his strength, when that heart is enmity against God, not subject to the law of God, and cannot be subject to the law of God? That difficulty then is insuperable.

What is the second? The second difficulty is this: The man is already a sinner and the wages of sin is death. God looked down from heaven to see if there was just one that did good, just one. No, not one. They are all under condemnation. Now, just as he stands right there he is a sinner, a condemned sinner, a sinner already obnoxious to the extreme penal sanction of the law. How is that man to inherit eternal life by keeping the law? That difficulty is insuperable.

What is the third? I want to read that to you. Some people ,you can get to appreciate the force of it, but it takes education to get even the few to ever fully realize its deep significance, and therefore I want to read it to you from the Bible itself. This I want you to hear in the very words of God: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point he is guilty of all. For He that said, ’Do not commit adultery, said also, ’Do not kill.’ Now, if thou commit no adultery, if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." (James 2:10-11.) Again, "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ’Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’" (Galatians 3:10.) What does that mean? There is a big word used a good deal now, "solidarity"-the solidarity of the law. It means that if a man is to seek justification by the law, it will avail nothing that he has obeyed 999,999 of its 1,000,000 precepts if he has broken one, just one time. To live by obedience means not partial, but total obedience; not obedience temporarily but universally; not obedience last week and this week and next week, but from the beginning of his life to his death; absolute obedience, not only to every divine requirement of God, but to the full spiritual power of that requirement.

Now, if a man can think ¾ if he has the germ of analysis and logic in him ¾ and he looks at these three obstacles in the way of keeping the law; first, an unrenewed nature that is hostile to God; second, to the fact that he is already a sinner and guilty of death; and third, that if he were not now a sinner that the obedience must in future be perfect to every commandment, at all times, then I ask you, in view of these three things, if any man under present conditions, can be saved by the law. This suggests three other questions: How are these three difficulties to be removed? The first one is removed by regeneration, what is called the new birth, taking away the stony heart and giving the heart of flesh. But let us hear the Scriptures themselves: "A new heart also will I gave you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." (Ezekiel 36:26-27.) "Jesus answered and said unto him, ’Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God…That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’" (John 3:3-6.) "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." (Titus 3:5.) But you seeking justification by law, where is your right to demand regeneration? If you get regeneration, it must come outside of any claims you have upon the law. I admit that regeneration would remove that first difficulty, but deny that regeneration comes by the law.

How is the second difficulty removed? This difficulty arising from the fact that the man is already a sinner and the wages of sin is death ¾ how is that to be removed? I venture to say that there is no way to remove it except to find a propitiation for the sin, such a propitiation as the law-giver will accept. It is to find some substitute upon whom that penalty can be inflicted and which will be acceptable to the one whose law has been violated. The Scriptures teach that. They teach that the law-maker must set forth a propitiation and that the substitute must expiate the offense, and as expiation means death, He must die. He must die under a curse. Hear the Scriptures themselves tell how this difficulty is removed:

"Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." (Romans 3:24-25) "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all... Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief; when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand." (Isaiah 53:5-10.) "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21.) "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, ’Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’" (Galatians 3:13.) "Who gave himself for us, that He might redeem us from iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Titus 2:14.) "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1 Peter 1:18-19.) "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed." (1 Peter 2:24.)

Unquestionably such expiation is able to remove this difficulty, but if you are seeking salvation by the law, how can you claim that anybody should do that for you? But how shall the third difficulty be removed? That difficulty lies in the solidarity of the law, requiring the perfect keeping of every commandment in all of its parts at all times. I know of but one way in the world in which that can be removed, which is, that a substitute be found whose obedience of the law is perfect; so that by the obedience of one many sinners may be justified. So testifies the Scripture: "For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous." (Romans 5:19.) But you, seeking justification by the law, how are you to claim the benefit of anything of that kind? Here arises another question, a question that goes right to the heart of a modern agitation. Let us suppose that two of these difficulties are removed, two of them-.that a man is regenerated and, being regenerated, now has a heart that prompts him to love God, and has good motives to prompt his good deeds, and let us suppose that he has received forgiveness of past sins through the expiation of his Substitute. Now why must that other difficulty be gotten out of the way by a substitute?

"Surely," one of these agitators may say, "the regenerated, forgiven man, can keep the law perfectly." I will tell you why he cannot. This regenerated man ¾ this forgiven man ¾ falls upon the remarkable discovery that when he would do good evil is present with him; that what he allows not, that he does, and what he allows, that he does not, and that while with his mind he consents to the law that is holy, just and good, yet how to perform he finds not. He finds in his members another law warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to sin. Isn’t that so, brother? After you were converted, after you were justified, did you not find it so? So that before there is personal capability of perfect obedience another provision must come in, a provision that shall eradicate the last remnant of the carnal nature and complete what had commenced in regeneration. In other words, there must be another exercise of divine grace that shall take this justified man and sanctify him wholly, body, soul and spirit; make his spirit perfect, and glorify his body. But it is a hard job when you attempt to glorify the body. How can it be done? It can only be done when mortality puts on immortality and corruption puts on incorruption. It can only be done by the power of the resurrection. So that before any man is even in condition personally to love God with all his heart and strength and mind and his neighbor as himself, he must have been regenerated; he must have been justified; he must have had a Substitute to keep the law for him; he must have been sanctified; he must have been glorified.

Well now, that disposes of a good many questions. Let us go on with this: If that man is saved ¾ now here is a question for you-if that man is so saved, what kind of salvation is it? Is it law-salvation? Here is God’s answer. I do wish you could take it right down into your souls: "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God and not of works, lest any man should boast." Grace provided the regeneration. Grace provided the propitiation. Grace provided the perfect obedience. Grace provided the santification of the spirit. Grace provided the resurrection and glorification of the body. It is all of grace, from turret to foundation stone, without any mixture of human merit, so much as the thickness of a spider’s web-that is the kind of salvation. But here comes in with perfect coolness a man who looks over his spectacles at you and tells you that his objection to this grace ¾ business is its tendency to immorality. But how can it tend to immorality? Right after the "By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God and not of works, lest any man should boast," it adds, "For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10.) And also it says that the "grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that we should live soberly and righteously and Godly in this present world." If this grace teaches anything, if it has any trend, that trend is in the direction of morality.

Here, then, let us answer a great question. I have turned it over and over in my mind. I have had occasion to do it and to think the thought clear, out, and to think of it in its several connections and to co-ordinate its parts, and that question is: Does not grace through faith make ,void the law? I want to show you how it does not. It honors and magnifies the law, first in its precept by the perfect obedience of the Substitute. It honors and magnifies the law in its penal sanction by the death of the Substitute. It honors and magnifies the law in that the beneficiaries of this grace have implanted in them a principle of holiness that shall cause them to love God and give them good motives to obey God, though imperfectly. And then it provides for the sanctification of that regenerated spirit, that the soul may love God perfectly. And then it provides for the glorification of the body, so that being put in heaven at the resurrection day, there is now at last a man who in himself, not in his Substitute, will love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself; so that personally and not through a proxy, at the end of it, the outcome of it, the subject of this grace fulfills the law.

Finally, this grace does not make void the law, because all the time that this regenerated and justified man is being preserved by it until the full work in him is accomplished, he is under the law. But no, you say, that is not scriptural; he is not under the law. Yes, he is under the law. He is indeed under the law as a rule of conduct, and no thoughtful man can deny it. Do you mean to say that the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is not over a Christian; and the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," and the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet" ¾ do you say that the Christian is not under that rule? The answer to it is: He is not under it as a rule of life, but he is under it as a rule of conduct. So on these five points there is nothing in salvation by grace through faith that makes void the law at any point, but in every point it honors it, in every point it magnifies it. As Paul says, "The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, out of a good conscience, out of a faith unfeigned." But perhaps some of you say, this is getting a long way from that lawyer. No, it is not. We come right back to that lawyer, for the concluding part, so far as this morning’s service is concerned. I wanted to show you why Jesus told that lawyer to do this and live, that He wanted to convict him, jostle him off of that platform he was on and turn his attention to the true way.

Pursuing the discussion our next question is: What is the constant attitude of the mind of a man who is trying to get to heaven that way? Our lesson says of the lawyer, "He desiring to justify himself." There it is. The constant attitude is a desire to justify himself. But what does that desire to justify himself prompt him to do? Look at it. Here is that high, broad commandment of God: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself." And here is a man trying to save himself by obedience to that law, and very anxious to justify himself. What result follows? He lowers that law to suit the grade of his obedience. How does this lawyer manifest that? By the question, "Who is thy neighbor?" He is saying, "O, yes, I am seeking salvation by the law. The law says I must love thy neighbor as myself. Now, in order for my obedience to that law to be practicable, I must so limit the meaning of that word ’neighbor’ as that my obedience will be co-extensive with it." The very first thing that it induces is the lowering of the divine commandment to suit the grade of the obedience. The lawyer in his mind was saying, "My neighbor is a Jew, and a Jew of my own sect, a Pharisee; of course, not a Sadducee. He is not a neighbor of mine; a Samaritan, pah! I would not even look toward a Samaritan. I love my neighbor as myself, but you must let me say who my neighbor is, and it means my’ brother Pharisee."

Now you can see why Jesus gave him that answer, and to expose that man’s profanation of the divine commandment, and the sophistry with which he sought to justify himself, He tells the parable of the good Samaritan. As if He had said: "I will throw a sidelight on that subject of neighbor, and I will throw such a sidelight as you yourself with your own mouth shall condemn yourself." Didn’t he condemn himself? What does the record say? When Christ got through with the story of the good Samaritan He put the question now to this lawyer: "Which of these three thinkest thou proved neighbor to him that fell among the robbers?" And out from his very lips the answer had to come, "He that showed mercy to him." But where does this answer land his law-righteousness?

If that is what the word neighbor means, looking back over your past life, O

Pharisee, where is your justification? How have you loved your neighbor as yourself? You that seek to be justified by the law, in the light of this parable defining neighbor, you are a lost soul and you know it. You know it. You know you hate a Sadducee. You know that you hate the Gentile. You know that you have wrapt the mantle of your exclusiveness about you, lest you should come in contact, and by contact, receive defilement from other men, and you have kept narrowing the law, narrowing it until you have got a little bit of a circle here, described by the word neighbor, that confines only you and your wife and your son and his wife, and nobody else in the world.

You never saw a man on the face of this earth that stood on the basis of his morality, that stood on his own record, either before or after his conversion, that did not lower the divine law in order to make his obedience fill what the law required. A sliding scale! A sliding scale! I can keep the law perfectly if you will let me reach up and slide it down to fit what I do. The parable of the good Samaritan disposes of the lawyer’s quibble on the second commandment, but our second paragraph deals with a whole class under both commandments. It shows that what that man did as an individual the Pharisees did as a class; that in order to obtain justification by the law they were sliding God’s law down on everything. How? Well, the law requires us to be clean, clean, clean. But they said we will slide: the law down so that it justs mean on the outside ¾ that it only means to keep the outside of the cup and platter clean. That is all. Inwardly full of rottenness and dead men’s bones. Ye foolish ones! Did not He that made the outside make the inside also? Does not the law of God require truth in the inward part? Does it not say that the inward part shall know wisdom and righteousness? And now you will slide it down until it only means obedience in little things, but not the great things; tithing mint and rue and herbs and leaving undone love and judgment and mercy. Ye hypocrites! It says, honor thy father and thy mother, but you do not want to honor your father and your mother; so you slide that law down, so that it says, that if I take some of my property and write, "Corban," on it, and say it is a gift, then I am under no obligations to take care of my old worn-out father; I am under no obligations to support the last days of my infirm mother. Thou hypocrite, sliding the law down, and it must be slidden down to get any justification.

How shall I be clean? How shall I keep clean? "Give alms of those things that are within and all things are clean unto you." Here is a question of how to be clean and how to keep clean. You say, "Wash externally." Jesus says, "Wash inwardly," and let the soul be made clean. What a man has on his hands, the little dirt on his hands, that when he goes to eat may get into his mouth, that does not defile him, but defilement comes from within. "Out of the heart of man proceed murder and blasphemy and adultery and every foul and loathsome thing." That is where defilement comes from. And they are right here in Waco, people sneering at your grace, people sneering at your salvation by faith, people telling you that your doctrine tends to immorality, because desiring to justify themselves.

Ah me! Look at the other man. Are you a Christian, desiring to justify yourself? "O, no! God be merciful to me a sinner." Look at him as he stands before you, a sinner saved by grace, imperfect in doing right; he knows it, but striving to go on under the promptings of divine grace, and ultimately by that grace to be altogether clean. O thou supreme question, thou paramount interrogation, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Before thy burning point I bare my guilty heart. Tonight we will conclude the discussion. Tonight we will find the true answer-the answer toward which our Lord was driving the lawyer. The way to which He ever sought to shut up the Pharisees, the only way, known under heaven and among men whereby any man can be saved.