The Doctrine of the Christian Life - 1. The Law of God - Part 1
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1. Under the Law
WE BELIEVE that God has placed Adam and all his descendants under his holy law. By this law man is required both to love the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength and to love his neighbour as himself.
Following the fall, God elaborated these two principles in ten commandments setting out man’s duty towards God and towards his fellows.
2. Universal
This law is binding upon the saved and the unsaved alike, but the motive of its observance by the christian will be love to Christ who has redeemed him from its curse.
3. The Law Cannot Save
The christian is not justified by keeping the law, but he strives to do so because it comes to him with the authority of God, whom he loves; the man who dies unsaved is condemned by it. Its requirements are essentially spiritual, and no fallen man can fully comply with the law’s demands. No such man can therefore by endeavouring to keep the law save his own soul.
One man alone, the Lord Jesus Christ, has fulfilled every requirement of the law. This he has done in his own person in the place of his people.