Puritan: Samuel Bolton
Source: The True Bounds of Christian Freedom
Originally Delivered: ~1645, London, England
The Lord’s Day: October 18, 2026
“Knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners ...” – 1 Timothy 1:8-9
“I conceive the opposition between the law and the Gospel to be chiefly man’s own making. Men should have been driven to Christ by the law, but instead they expected life in obedience to it. Until the law kills you, and you are dead to it, you will look for righteousness and life through obedience to it. But when once the law has killed you, and showed you it is dead to you and can do you no good, so that you can expect nothing from it, then will you look for life by Christ alone. But now in the Gospel we are freed from impossibilities. Here all things are possible, not in respect of ourselves but in respect of God, Who has undertaken to work all our works in us and for us.
Though there may be failing in action, yet where there is truth of affection, God can own it. In the Gospel God accepts affections for actions, endeavors for performance, desire for ability. A Christian is made up of desires, of mourning, thirsting and bewailing: O that my ways were directed! O miserable man that I am! Here is Gospel perfection. The law urges obedience upon pain of eternal death (Deut. 27:14-26; Gal. 3:10), and enforces its demands by terror, but the Gospel by sweetness and love; all terror is gone. The book of the law was placed between the cherubim and under the mercy-seat, to tell us that, under the Gospel, every law comes now to the saints from the mercy-seat. All rigor has gone and nothing but sweetness is the motive to it, and the principle of obedience: “The love of Christ compels us” (2 Cor. 5:14), as the apostle says. There is nothing more powerful than love. Things impossible to others are easy to them that love. Love knows no difficulties: “My yoke is easy, my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). Love is an affection that refuses to be put off by duties or difficulties which come between it and the person beloved. Jacob served a hard apprenticeship for Rachel, and yet, says the Scripture, he esteemed seven years “but a few days, for the love he had to her” (Gen. 29:20). Love shortens time and facilitates labor.
A godly man takes in whatever concerns his happiness by faith, and lays out whatever concerns his duty by love. Faith and love are the all of a Christian. The apostle says so: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which works by love” (Gal. 5:6). Faith, like Mary, sits at the feet of Christ to hear His Word, and love, like Martha, compasses Him about with service. Faith is the great receiver, and love is the great disburser; we take in all by faith and lay our all by love. This, then, is the privilege which believers enjoy; they are freed from the rigor of the law. He that thinks not service to be his freedom thinks not sin to be his bondage, and therefore he is in bondage (Luke 1:74, Rom. 8:12).
We preach obedience to the law, but not as the Papists do. They preach obedience as a means to justification; we preach justification as a means to obedience. We cry down works in opposition to grace in justification, and we cry up obedience as the fruits of grace in sanctification. We cry down the law in respect of justification, but we set it up as a rule of sanctification. The law sends us to the Gospel that we may be justified; and the Gospel sends us to the law again to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified. Let not Moses take the place of Christ; but, at the same time, make a right use of Moses. Let the servant follow the Master; let Moses follow Christ. Live as though there were no Gospel; die as though there were no law. Pass the time of this life in the wilderness of this world under the conduct of Moses; but let none but Joshua bring you over into Canaan, the promised land. Do what you can while you live; but be sure to die resting on Christ’s merits.