Again you say of the moral law:—
“There is nothing in that law about Christ, not a hint. All the law does, is to condemn those who break it, and justify those who keep it. It is the sense of guilt in the man’s conscience, which is acted upon by the Spirit of God, which makes him go to Christ; not anything in the moral law itself.”
This admits my whole argument. Pray tell me what makes the sense of guilt in the man’s conscience? Paul says that “by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Have you found something else besides the law of God, which will make a man conscious of his sinful condition?
If conscience has the power in itself to make a man conscious of his guilt, what office, pray tell me, has the law? What is the use of the law, if the conscience alone convicts of sin? And if conscience possesses the quality of making a man conscious of his guilt, why is it that all men are not equally conscious of guilt? The reason, and the only reason that can be given, is that some men are better instructed in the law than others are. You cannot escape the conclusion that it is the law which produces the sense of guilt in the man’s conscience, by which he is driven to Christ, unless you deny that by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Since it is the sense of guilt in the man’s conscience that makes him go to Christ, and nothing but the law can produce a sense of guilt, it is emphatically the law which drives men to Christ. That is the office of the law to sinful men—to overwhelm them with a sense of guilt, and so to drive them to Christ that they may be justified by faith.
True, the ten commandments say nothing about Christ, but does the sense of guilt in the man’s conscience say anything about Christ? That is, does every man have naturally a knowledge of Christ? Of course not. But the law begets in the man a consciousness of guilt. The law does this only by the aid of the Spirit, of course, for the word of God is the Spirit’s sword. But when the law, through the Spirit, has produced this sense of guilt, the man feels oppressed and seeks for ease from his load, and is forced to go to Christ, because there is nowhere else that he can go.
In trying to avoid my conclusion, you have in the above quotation deliberately walked into it. There was nothing else that you could do.