Matthew 19:16-22 And, behold, one came and said to him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?… It is certainly the doctrine of Scripture that moral integrity alone can never benefit us with God; that even the offering of our prayers is accounted worthless except as it is perfumed with love. Evidently, then, his confidence is false and dangerous indeed who, because he keeps unbroken the great laws of social morality, imagines his claim to mercy and salvation secure. Besides being unscriptural, such a theory is not rational. I. IT IGNORES THE VERY DESIGN OF MAN'S CREATION, viz., the glory of God. Social morality is at best a very inferior virtue. It is only the submission of one part of man's nature to an inferior series of God's laws. If this world were all, that might be enough. Man is endowed with faculties which can only be exercised toward the unseen world. As well might the planet, obeying the one law of its propulsion around the earth, break away from the other which binds it to the sun, and yet hope to escape, as he who, fulfilling his duty to man, neglects his duty to God. II. IT IS FOUNDED ON A FALSE IDEA OF RELIGION. God seeks not mere abject obedience, but the devotion of the heart. Without a distinct movement of the will and affections towards Him, all religious observances are worse than naught. They are the casket without the diamond — the body without the sustaining, invigorating, glorifying life. III. IT MAKES THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST AN UNNECESSARY THING. If man by being honest and upright and humane and gentle could merit heaven, no need for Calvary. Yet Jesus laid aside the robes of His Deity and came to earth, and offered Himself a sacrifice on the cross. To rely for salvation on natural morality is, then, to mock Christ in His sufferings; it is to go up, as it were, upon the blood-stained slopes of Calvary, and, beholding Him in His agony, to cry aloud, "We need not Thy blood, we despise Thine aid!" (W. Rudder, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? |
    |