"My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not thelaw of your mother; Bind them continually upon your heart, and tie them about your neck. When you go, it shall lead you; when you sleep, it shall keep you; and when you awake, it shall talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life." (Proverbs 6:20-23)
The law of God is nothing other than His life. It is in no sense to be compared with human laws, for it has nothing in common with them.
Men get together, and after a certain amount of deliberation they decide on certain rules which they will impose on other men. The requirements may in the main be just, but they cannot possibly do equal justice to all, since they cannot take into consideration all the various circumstances and conditions; and even where they are applicable, they give the person to whom they speak no power. They do nothing; they are lifeless; the man to whom they are addressed must supply the action.
Moreover human statutes have no special connection with the men who issue them. The laws and the law-makers are no part of each other, and very often the laws are ignored by the very men who make them. So for a double reason the laws cannot put any life or goodness into the subjects of them:
1. The men who make them are not themselves perfectly in harmony with them, and
2. They cannot, no matter how good they are, put any of their personality or vitality into the laws which they frame.
Not so with God's law. He himself is all that He requires. He is not only good, but He is Goodness. His own life is the law.
Each plant has what is termed its "law of growth." There are certain general characteristics common to all plant life, and then each plant has certain individual peculiarities. But these "laws" are not certain enactments to which the plant conforms. The plant grows by the Word of God which says now as in the beginning, "Let the earth bring forth grass, etc.," (Genesis 1:11) and that Word of life abiding in each makes it perfect "after its kind." (Genesis 1:12)
God's "everlasting power and Divinity," that is, His own life and personality, are revealed in all the things that He has made. (Romans 1:20) The plant is involuntarily submissive to the life force of God, and so it conforms to law.
In like manner God's law for mankind is His own character-- His life. He wishes men to be good, but He himself is all goodness. There is no goodness but God's goodness, consequently men conform to His righteous requirements only by voluntarily yielding to His life as implicitly as the plants of the field do involuntarily. He does not require us to be something of ourselves; but He is what He wants us to be, and we become that by accepting His life. "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5)
This is the Gospel message. His life is the law, and His life is light. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4)
So the law is light. This is most literally true. God conveys His life to the earth through agents. He has set His glory in the heavens, and made the sun, together with the stars, the bearer of light to the earth. Mind this, the sun does not originate the light, but is simply the bearer of God's light--God's life to the earth. Thus the sun is, under God, the supporter of all life upon our planet. Whatever we have, whether it be food or clothing, grows from the earth; but there could be no life nor growth without the light coming from God through the sun. Thus we see that light is most emphatically our life.
But this life that comes to us in the light is God's own life of righteousness. Its shining brings the plant of the field to perfection; and if men were only voluntarily as submissive to the life of God as the plants are involuntarily, it would bring them to equal perfection after their kind.
With this knowledge concerning the light, the life, and the law, we can see the force of the 19th Psalm: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard [or "without these their voice is heard"]. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them has He set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." (Psalm 19:1-9)
There is no change of subject in verse 7. The law of the Lord is conveyed to us in the light and heat of the sun, which gives life to the earth. If we but recognize God's life in the light, we shall receive it with constant gratitude, and yield to Him, that He may direct His own life in His own way. Thus shall we glorify God in our lives.
We are precluded from making the objection that we cannot see how God can convey righteousness to us in the light of the sun. We cannot tell how He conveys strength and beauty in perfection to the plant by means of the light, but we know the fact; and that fact is ever before us to teach us the possibility of His imparting to us, by the same means, the righteousness for which He designed us.--Present Truth, August 4, 1898.