Demands of the Law

The men who think they have kept the Law of God are evidently very far from understanding its meaning: they have a very poor idea of the mind of God or they would not have thought that they had fulfilled the will of God with such a poor, miserable, hypocritical righteousness as theirs. The Pharisee thought he had kept the Law, for he fasted twice a week, and paid tithes of all he possessed, and yet the same man could go and swallow a widow's house behind the door and do all sorts of abominable actions. It is clear that he had formed a shockingly low notion of true holiness; in fact, he had degraded the Law into a mere external ordinance, which took note of the outside of the cup and platter and left the inside full of filthiness.