(2.) He approved it, and delighted in it. He approved it, for he said, ‘I consent unto the law, that it is good.’ Nor did he regard it as a yoke of bondage about his soul. It was not a rigid code by which he was forced against his will. How any person can suppose that this passage is the language of an unregenerate, or unconverted man, I cannot imagine. Did you ever know an unconverted man to delight in the perfect holiness of God? Such holiness condemns, restrains, and frightens him. But St. Paul said, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inner man.’ The fact was he had experienced the great promise of the New Covenant: ‘I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it on their hearts.’ God, the Holy Ghost, had written the law on his heart, and now he loved it. To please God was his greatest joy, and to do His will was the chief desire of his soul. He could say, as David did, ‘Oh, how I love Thy love: it is my meditation all the day!’ He was not content with the measure of his own consciousness, or the standard of his fellow-men, or a vain idea of doing his best, or doing no harm to any one. He did not split hairs about the distinction between being blameless and being faultless. He had seen the Lord in His beauty, and adored Him in His holiness, so now it was the whole mind and will of God that filled his soul, and the great desire of his heart was expressed in such words as those of the Psalmist, ‘Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.’ And does not this teach us a lesson of inexpressible importance respecting ourselves? In Christ Jesus we are not driven by a slave master, and compelled by the lash into obedience. We ‘love the law,’ because we ‘love the Lord.’ We find His will, and His word, to be dearer unto us than thousands of gold and silver; and we experience the blessedness described by our blessed Saviour when He said, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’