What is still more wonderful, is that he absolutely cites Moses when pronouncing a curse upon those who do not continue in the law; whereas he himself pronounces those cursed who are of the deeds of the law, adducing an opposite passage to confirm his opposing sentiment. Just as the former (Moses) is negative, the latter (Paul) is affirmative. But he does so, because the matter stands thus before God: those who are most zealous of the deeds of the law, least of all fulfil the law — for they lack the Spirit, who is the fulfiller of the law. It is true, they may attempt to fulfil it through their own powers, but they can effect nothing. Thus each saying is true: according to Moses, those are accursed who do not continue in the law; and according to Paul, those are accursed who are of the deeds of the law. For each of these writers requires the Spirit in the performance. Without this Spirit, Paul says, the deeds of the law, however much is done, do not justify. And for the same reason, without the Spirit, as Moses says, they do not continue in all the things which are written. 706
SECT. 11. Paul’s meaning is, ‘works of the law, done in the flesh, condemn.’
In fine, Paul abundantly confirms what I am advancing here, by his own division of persons.
He divides men who are the doers of the law into two parties: the one he makes spiritual doers, the other carnal doers; leaving none between the two. For thus he speaks: “By the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified,’ What does this mean, if not that they work at the law without the Spirit, seeing that they are flesh — that is, ungodly and ignorant of God — and their works profit them nothing? Thus, in Gal 3.2, using the same division, he says, “Did you receive the Spirit from the deeds of the law, or from the hearing of faith?” And again in Rom 3.21, “Now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.” And again, “We judge that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” From all of this, put together, it becomes plain and clear that the Spirit is opposed by Paul to the works of the law — just as it is opposed to all other things which are not spiritual, and to all the powers and pretences of the flesh. This makes it certain that this is the sentiment of Paul, agreeing with Christ in John 3.6, that all which is not of the Spirit (however beautiful, holy, and excellent) is flesh. And therefore, even the most beautiful works of the divine law are of this character, by whatever powers they may have been wrung out.
For the Spirit of Christ is necessary. Without it, they are all deserving only of damnation. Let it be a settled point, then, that what Paul means by ‘the deeds of the law,’ is not only those which are ceremonial, but all the works of the whole law. It will be settled at the same time, that whatever is done without the Spirit, in doing the deeds of the law, is condemned. But this power of Freewill — truly the most excellent thing in man — seeing that we are now treating Freewill properly so-called, is without the Spirit. Whereas, being ‘of the works of the law’ is such that nothing better can be said of a man. He does not say, you may observe, ‘as many as are of sins and transgressions against the law;’ but “as many as are of the deeds of the law;” that is, the best of men — men zealous for the law — those who, besides the power of Freewill, have even been assisted by the law; that is, they have been instructed and exercised in it. 707
SECT. 12. All the law does is to show sin.
If Freewill — assisted by the law and occupied in the law with all its might — profits nothing, and does not justify, but is left in ungodliness and flesh, then what are we to think it can do alone, without the law?
“By the law,” he says, “is the knowledge of sin.” He shows here how much, and how far, the law profits a man. In other words, Freewill is so blind when left to herself, as not even to know sin, but to stand in need of the law for a teacher. Now, what can someone endeavour towards taking away sin, who does not know what sin is? This is what he can do: he can take sin as no sin, and take what is not sin for sin — as experience abundantly shows. How the world persecutes the righteousness of God which is preached in the Gospel! It vilifies it as heresy, error, and all other kinds of the worst possible names, by the instrumentality of those very persons whom she considers the best of men, and the most zealous for righteousness and godliness. Meanwhile, she boasts and brags about her own works and actions as though they were righteousness and wisdom, but in reality, they are sin and error. Paul therefore stops the mouth of Freewill with his words, by teaching that sin is shown to her by the law. She herself is someone who does not know what sin is. This is how far Paul is from granting Freewill any power to strive after good.
And here is answered that question of Diatribe’s, so often repeated throughout her whole treatise, ‘If we can do nothing, what is the use of so many laws, so many precepts, so many threatenings, so many promises?’ Paul replies here, “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” He gives a far different answer to this question than what man or Freewill thinks. Freewill is not proved by the law, he says; she does not work together with it unto righteousness: for righteousness is not by the law, but by the knowledge of sin. This is the benefit, this the effect, this the office of the law: to be a light to the ignorant and blind. And it is such a light that it shows disease, sin, wickedness, death, hell, and the wrath of God, are ours; but it does not help or release us from them. She is content with having shown us what our state is. Upon knowing his disease of sin, the man is sad, afflicted, and despairing. The law does not help him; and much less can he help himself. Another light is necessary to show him his remedy. This light is the word of the Gospel, displaying Christ as the deliverer from all these. It is not Reason or Freewill which makes Him known. No indeed; how could she make him known when she herself is very darkness, needing the light of the law to show her that self-disease which she does not see by her own light, but imagines to be soundness. 708
SECT. 13. Confirmed by Gal 3.19 and Rom 5.20.
In Galatians, too, he treats the same question in just the same way, when he asks, What then is the law? And he answers this question, not as Diatribe would, by saying that it proves there is such a thing as Freewill, but by saying, “It was ordained for the sake of transgressions, until the seed comes, to which he had made the promise.” For the sake of transgressions, he says. It is not to restrain them, as Jerome dreams (since Paul maintains that it was promised to the Seed who would come, that He would take away and restrain sin by the free gift of righteousness); but to increase transgressions, as he writes in Rom 5.20, “The law stole in, that sin might abound.” 709
It is not that, without the law, there were no sins, or that sins did not abound. But because transgressions were not known to be transgressions, or such great offences, the greater part, and the greatest of them, were accounted righteousness. Now, if sin is not known, there is no room for remedy and no hope, because they would not bear the hand of the physician — for they are whole in their own eyes, having no need of a physician. The law is therefore necessary to make sin known; so that, by knowing the baseness and vastness of his sin, the proud man, who seems whole in his own eyes, may be humbled, and may sigh and pant after the grace which is set before him in Christ. See what a simple sentence is here! “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” Yet this sentence of itself is powerful enough to confound and overturn Freewill. For if it is true that she does not know, of herself, what sin and wickedness are, then as Paul says both here and in Rom 7.7 (“I would not have known lust to be sin, except the law had said, You shall not covet”), how will she ever know what righteousness and goodness are?
If she does not know what righteousness is, how will she ever strive after it? We do not know the sin in which we have been born, in which we live and move and have our being; or rather, which lives and moves and reigns in us. How then could we know righteousness which reigns without us, in the heavens? What a mere nothing, and less than nothing, these words make of that
