Mark 1:4

Mark 1:4

Law before Liberty.

As far as Holy Scripture and historical certainty teach us we see man always the same being in body, and brain, and feeling, but in experience a child; even as we also, with all our boastings, shall be children to the more experienced generations to come. This it is which makes the old world so full of power to us. We travel, bit by bit, along the track of life, and see how each lesson was taught and great principles enforced one by one, and all the bitter penalties that came on men, who little knew that the whole world teaching was being wrought out in them, but knew right well what they had to do at the time they chose evil.

I. The Law before the Gospel, St. John the Baptist before Christ, are the great examples of this truth. God for fifteen hundred years pressed the need of law, sternly and unceasingly, by many punishments and many blessings, on His people. Mark, too, the very remarkable fact that the Jew did not know in the least when he obeyed the little, everyday laws which made him a marked man among other nations, that his national life first, afterwards his Christian life, depended on his honour and his obedience. No man knows what depends on his being faithful; we only know what our honour and faithfulness require.

II. The sin of our day is law-breaking under pretence of liberty. There can be no liberty in man or society without perfect trustworthiness and self-mastery. When I look back at the ignorance of the wisest and holiest Jew as to the real meaning of his laws, which we Christians see so plainly, I cannot help looking forward, and feeling that we must be equally ignorant of the great, living world destined to come out of our laws. I feel my ignorance, whilst I see an unknown glory in doing right. Love of Christ destroys law by doing more than the law requires, in no other way. St. John the Baptist, the great personification of righteous law and self-mastery, comes first to, preach the baptism of repentance. You cannot be Christians and lawbreakers; you cannot be Christians and rash criticisers of law. When your love for Christ makes you do always far more than law demands, then you can disregard law. He who gives, for example, does not want to be told not to steal.

E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons,vol. ii., p. 238.

References: Mark 1:4 . Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 99. Mark 1:4. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 40. Mark 1:4. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 150. Mark 1:7. H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 11.