Ernest Kevan - sin and law

Near where I lived at one time there was an open common, through the middle of which there ran a busy main road. It was the custom of mothers to permit their little ones to play on the part of the common near their homes, but to forbid them to cross the busy road to the other section. The road was the boundary, and if a child crossed it in order to play in what seemed the more attractive part of the common, his action would be transgression – ‘trans’ (across) ‘gression’ (going). The drawing of the boundary line was not with the view to denying the child any pleasure; it was a boundary of loving wisdom. In the same way, the boundary of God’s holy law, that has been put like a vast circle around our lives, is a limit of love drawn by infinitely wise and tender goodness in God. This boundary – the law of God – is nevertheless authoritative, just as the word of a parent to a little child, and the transgression of this boundary is a breaking of God’s commandment.