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Two ways to eternal life are here contrasted. The one is by doing; the other is by believing. The one by doing a full and finished righteousness for ourselves; the other by believing that Christ has done a full and sufficient righteousness for us. There are two places at which these respective ways may be compared with each other.

I. AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE TWO WAYS — when man, under the first effectual visitation of earnestness, resolves to go forth in busy search after the good of his eternity.

1. And here a consideration meets us at the very outset of the way of doing.

(1) It is he who doeth all things that shall live. Have we hitherto done all things:? It is not enough that there be the purpose of obedience in all time coming. Can we appeal to every hour of our bygone history, and confidently speak of each, having, without one flaw, been pervaded by those duteous conformities of a heart ever glowing with affection, and a hand ever glowing with activity, which the creature owes to the Creator who gave him birth? Should there be one single deed either of sin or of deficiency to soil the retrospect, it nullifies the enterprise.

(2) If the conscience be at all enlightened, this will be felt as a difficulty. The sense of a debt which no effort of ours can possibly lessen — of a guilt that by ourselves is wholly inexpiable — will paralyse the movements of a conscious sinner; and just because they paralyse his hopes. The likest thing to it in human experience is, when a decree of bankruptcy without a discharge has come forth on the man who has long struggled with his difficulties, and is now irrecoverably sunk under the weight of them. There is an effectual drag laid upon this man's activity. The spirit of industry dies within him when he finds that he can neither make aught for himself, nor, from the enormous mass of his obligations, make any sensible advances towards his liberation; and he either breaks forth into recklessness or is chilled into inactivity by despair.

2. From all this there is no release to the spiritual bankrupt, till the gospel puts its discharge into his hands. By this gospel there is a deed of amnesity made known, to which all are welcome. There is revealed to us a Surety who hath taken the whole of our debt upon Himself. And whereas in the way of doing, the very entrance was impracticably closed against us — this initial obstruction is entirely moved aside from the way of believing. Like the emancipated debtor to whom the fruits of all his future toil and diligence are now fully assured to him, a weight is taken off from the activities of nature. Our labour is no longer in vain — because now it is labour in the Lord; and every effort becomes a step in advance towards heaven.

II. AFTER A MAN HAS SET FORTH IN THE PURSUIT OF THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, and has made the weary struggle it may be of months or of years in order to attain it.

1. A thousand punctualities may be rendered, with the view to establish a merit in the eye of heaven's Lawgiver, which never can be effectually done without a full and faultless adherence to Heaven's law. Now, if conscience feel as it ought, there will throughout this whole process be an inappeasable disquietude — a self-dissatisfaction which no doings or deserts of our own can terminate. For, let it be observed, that, reach what elevation of virtue we may, the higher we proceed, we shall command a farther view of the spaces which still lie before us; or, in other words, we shall be more filled with a sense of the magnitude of our own shortcomings. The conscience, in fact, grows in sensibility, just as the conduct is more the object of our strict and scrupulous regulation. The presumptuous imagination of our sufficiency comes down when we thus bring it to the trial; and that impotency of which we were not aware at the outset, we are made to know and to feel experimentally. Meanwhile that is a sore drudgery in which we are implicated; and all the more fatiguing that it is so utterly fruitless. This is the grand failure. The hand can labour; but the heart cannot love. And after wasting and wearying ourselves with the operose drudgeries of a manifold observation, we still find that we are helpless defaulters from the first and the greatest commandment.

2. Now, it is when thus harassed, that the very outlet required is opened. The righteousness, which the sinner has so ineffectually tried to make out in his own person, has been already made out for him by another; and now lies for his acceptance. The sin, which hitherto has so hardened him with despondency and remorse, is now washed away by the blood of a satisfying expiation. What a mighty enlargement when the title-deed to heaven, for which he had been stretching forward with many long and laborious efforts, till he at last sunk down into exhaustion and despair, is put into his hand. He passes from death unto life. And when delivered from the burden of this felt impossibility, man breaks forth on a scene of enlargement; and with all the alacrity of an emancipated creature whose bonds have been loosed, he proceeds to offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and to call on the name of the Lord.

3. And let us not be afraid lest this judicial salvation should not bring a moral salvation in its train. The great author of that economy under which we live will sanctify as well as justify; and if we but trust in Christ, we shall be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who will superadd the personal to the judicial righteousness, and make us meet in character as well as meet in law for that heaven, the door whereof Christ hath opened to us.

(T. Chalmers, D.D.)

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KJV: For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.

WEB: For Moses writes about the righteousness of the law, "The one who does them will live by them."