If I am saved, it is a mark of grace that I want to keep the law. The Spirit moves in my conscience. To be very practical: men can be desperately proud, so can women. But permit me to say – and I can't find this in the Bible, but permit me just to offer an opinion as an ancient one – I have come to believe that men are worse. Men can be desperately proud. The wife of a Christian man says to him one day, ‘My dear, you were wrong. You did something terribly wrong. Your plan is wrong. You said something terribly wrong.’ How do you respond? ‘Who is she to say that to me? This is outrageous’, and the devil stirs up these ideas, and your pride is inflated, and you react badly. Your conscience is moved, but you resist him, and you grieve him, and you don't melt. Even worse, your fifteen-year-old boy says, ‘Dad, you sinned.’ How dare he say that? And the ideas come pumping into your mind. This is outrageous. And you react very badly. But if you respond well, and the Spirit of God is at work, then after a moment's turmoil you say, ‘Son, you're right.’ That is the use of the law, which is right: to convict, to open the hearts, to bring repentance and reparation. This is a mark of grace. That the Spirit works in our life, day by day, promoting us to good works, moving us, convicting us, helping us, leading us on into opposite, positive virtues.
The gospel has been ‘committed to my trust’, says Paul. Why was it that the apostle Paul could do the things that he did, and suffer so much to continue with his great mission? Because he had something committed to his trust. And so do we. If we woke up to this – we have been saved, and the gospel is committed to our trust; not only to defend it and to preserve it, but to make it known. It has been committed to us. We are commissioned expressly, and we shall have to give account. If we would only grasp this, we would have undying zeal. We wouldn’t be able to ease our way through the Christian life, neglecting spiritual things, making small contributions, taking endless times off the work of God. I am commissioned by God. I am being entrusted with something. That is the reason for the great zeal of the apostle. You think of human weakness, human nature quickly subverts the gospel, and we are trusted to keep it intact. Human hatred will threaten us wherever we are placed, in our place of work, in our college or school. We will be despised if we speak the gospel, yet it is committed to our trust. We have got to go on doing that, no matter what the consequences. Satan will attack us and tempt us to ease and self-seeking, or we've got to think like the apostle Paul the most. Who are we? Poor, lost sinners, wonderfully saved by grace, and then the most precious thing, the gospel itself, is committed to our trust, and we have got to keep it, and to declare it. Of course, Paul was an apostle. You can see the rigors of his life, but he held tightly onto the gospel throughout. He kept it, he defended it, he proclaimed it. Something immeasurably precious had been committed to Paul’s trust. Yes, God trusts us to do something with what he gives us. He uses his people in the work of spreading the gospel, but they need to realise how precious is what they have received from him.
The gospel satisfies all the attributes of God. Now that's a deep theological point. The gospel is God's solution to human sin, but it's a solution which is so profound and so wonderful, it satisfies all the attributes of God. For example, obviously, it satisfies his great holiness. How is God's holiness and his justice to be satisfied. How can God forgive human beings their sin, thus showing his mercy and his love? Because if he just simply forgave human beings their sin, it would satisfy his love and his mercy, but what about his holiness and justice? That would not be satisfied. In order to satisfy his holiness and justice, God has created a scheme, the gospel, whereby human sin is punished without punishing the sinner. God comes himself in the person of his Son. He takes the punishment. So God's justice is satisfied in that he punishes the sinner, though he punishes the sinner in the person of Christ, the scapegoat, the sin-bearer of his people. And his love and his mercy is satisfied. All of God’s attributes come together in the gospel, in the atonement, in providing a way of salvation for his people.
A legalist is a person who thinks that by his obedience, he will obtain salvation and please God. By contrast, a person who believes in grace alone, free pardon, free salvation, and then who voluntarily strives with the help of God to honour God, but doesn't believe that at his best he is earning righteousness; such a person is only following the command of God. He's only showing his gratitude and thanks to God by attempting to live as God wants him to live. He is only honouring the Father's demands. He doesn't think his efforts will save him. He's always depended upon Christ, but he is moved to honour and obey and to seek help to do his best. He is not a legalist because he is not trusting in his performance for his salvation. If somebody says to you, ‘Oh, being concerned about living an orderly Christian life: that is legalism, then you are looking at a shallow, lightweight, untaught Christian.