Many flatter themselves that their state is good and their salvation sure because they do not live securely in a course of sin but, on the contrary, endeavor to keep the commandments as well as they can and because God is so merciful that He will surely pardon the sins that the infirmity of their nature renders unavoidable. This is a common but a very dangerous—yea, a fundamental—error; for it proceeds on the supposition that the righteous law can accept of defective or imperfect obedience and that divine justice can dispense with the punishment of sin. No man under the law as a covenant can be accepted for endeavoring to keep the precepts of it as well as he can. The law does not say, “Labor to obey” but “Do it” and “Do it perfectly and perpetually; do it without the smallest failure.” The least deficiency in obedience will subject a man to the curse. The self-righteous sinner, then, would do well to consider that he is under a law that demands absolute perfection of obedience on pain of death in all its dreadful extent and that, if he has transgressed but in a single instance, he is thereby exposed to the eternal execution of its righteous and tremendous penalty. “Tell me,” says our apostle, “ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” (Gal. 4:21). Do you not hear that it requires perfect obedience of you, on pain of the curse? And if it demands perfect obedience and, at the same time, complete satisfaction for sins that are past, what will you do, who cannot give to it either the one or the other? What will you do in the prospect of death and of judgment, who have no communion with the second Adam in His righteousness? Alas, your own righteousness is far, very far, from being commensurate with the perfect rule of that holy and righteous law by which all your thoughts, words, and actions are then to be tried! … Oh, that self-righteous and secure sinners would consider, before it is too late, how impossible it will be for them ever to obtain eternal life by their own righteousness and that they would, by faith, submit themselves to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, by which He has magnified the law and made it honorable!
John Colquhoun | A Treatise on the Law and Gospel (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books), 122–23, 124.
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Tony Phelps
Tony grew up in Rhode Island. He was educated at BA (University of Rhode Island) and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He worked in the insurance industry for ten years. He planted a PCA church in Wakefield, RI where he served for eleven years. In 2015–18 he pastored Covenant Reformed Church (URCNA) in Colorado Springs. He is currently pastor of Living Hope (OPC). Tony is married to Donna and together they have three children.
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