January 17 Daily Devotional

What do ye more than others?

There was never a man whose preaching, with its mighty emphasis upon grace, was so frequently misunderstood [as Paul]. You remember the deduction some people had been drawing in Rome and in other places. They said, "Now then, in view of the teaching of this man Paul, let us do evil that grace may abound, for, surely, this teaching ... leads to that conclusion and to no other. Paul has just been saying, 'Where sin abounded grace did much more abound'; very well, let us continue in sin that more and more grace may abound."

"God forbid," says Paul; and he is constantly having to say that. To say that because we are under grace we therefore have nothing at all to do with law and can forget it, is not the teaching of the Scriptures.... We are not under the law in the sense that it condemns us; it no longer pronounces judgement or condemnation on us. No! but we are meant to live it, and we are even meant to go beyond it.

The argument of the Apostle Paul is that I should live, not as a man who is under the law, but as Christ's free man. Christ kept the law, He lived the law; as this very Sermon on the Mount emphasizes, our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. Indeed, He has not come to abolish the law; every jot and tittle of the law has to be fulfilled and perfected.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, p. 12

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings

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