John Wesley’s Sermon 34 – The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of the Law

(The Law’s Origin, Nature, Characteristics, and Purpose)

The following sermon is translated according to my prompts by Google Gemini AI. Note that the sermon was translated in blocks, and in this case I’m choosing to include those translation notes after each block. All bolding is a reference to these notes and is not for emphasis.

I refer to this as “translation,” but it is really simply a modernization of language.

You can find original sermon here.

“Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” – Romans 7:12

Perhaps there are few topics within the entire scope of religion as little understood as this one. Readers of this Epistle are usually told that by “the law” Saint Paul means the Jewish law; and so, assuming they have no concern with it, they pass on without further thought. Indeed, some are not satisfied with this explanation, but observing that the Epistle is directed to the Romans, they infer that the Apostle at the beginning of this chapter is alluding to the old Roman law. But as they have no more concern with this than with the ceremonial law of Moses, they don’t spend much thought on what they suppose is occasionally mentioned merely to illustrate another point.
But a careful observer of the Apostle’s discourse will not be content with these superficial explanations. And the more he weighs the words, the more convinced he will be that Saint Paul, by the law mentioned in this chapter, does not mean either the ancient law of Rome or the ceremonial law of Moses. This will clearly appear to all who attentively consider the tenor of his discourse. He begins the chapter: “Do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I speak to those who know the law),”—to those who have been instructed in it from their youth—“that the law has dominion over a person as long as he lives?” (What! the law of Rome only, or the ceremonial law? No, surely; but the moral law.) “For,” to give a plain instance, “the woman who has a husband is bound by the” moral “law to her husband as long as he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she is married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband is dead, she is free from that law: so that she is no adulteress, though she is married to another man.” From this particular instance the Apostle proceeds to draw that general conclusion: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters,” by a plain comparison, “you also have become dead to the law”—the entire Mosaic institution—”by the body of Christ,” offered for you, and bringing you under a new dispensation: “That you should” without any blame “be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead;” and has thereby given proof of his authority to make the change; “that we should bring forth fruit to God.” And this we can do now, whereas before we could not: “for when we were in the flesh”—under the power of the flesh, that is, of corrupt nature, which was necessarily the case until we knew the power of Christ’s resurrection—”the sinful passions, which were aroused by the law,”—which were revealed and inflamed by the Mosaic law, not conquered—”were at work in our members,”—breaking out in various ways—”to bring forth fruit to death.” “But now we are delivered from the law;” from that entire moral, as well as ceremonial system; “that being dead by which we were held;”—that entire institution being now as it were dead, and having no more authority over us than the husband, when dead, has over his wife: “That we should serve him”—who died for us and rose again—”in newness of spirit;”—in a new spiritual dispensation; “and not in the oldness of the letter;”—with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the Mosaic institution (Romans 7:1-6).
The Apostle, having gone this far in proving that Christianity had set aside the Jewish system, and that the moral law itself, though it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before—now stops to propose and answer an objection: “What shall we say then? Is the law sin?” So some might infer from a misunderstanding of those words, “the sinful passions, which were aroused by the law.” “By no means!” says the Apostle, that we should say so. No, the law is an irreconcilable enemy to sin; for by the law: “I had not known lust,” or evil desire, to be sin, “except the law had said, ‘You shall not covet'” (Romans 7:7). After opening this further, in the four following verses, he adds this general conclusion, with more particular regard to the moral law, from which the preceding instance was taken: “Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”
In order to explain and emphasize these profound words, so little regarded because so little understood, I will try to show: First, the origin of this law; Secondly, its nature; Thirdly, its properties (that it is holy, and just, and good); and, Fourthly, its uses.