Herein lies the idolatrous abuse of all God’s outward dispensations: they are taken for the thing itself. The Pharisee rested so thoroughly in the law, that he rejected the Savior to whom the law directed him. The sound evangelical thinks that when he has mastered the letter of the gospel, he thereby knows its truth and power. And thus while claiming allegiance to Paul’s doctrine, he knows little of Paul’s spiritual experience which caused him to say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Vanity of vanities to engage in theological discussions about various Scripture interpretations that leave men’s lives unchanged. Never did Christ say, “By their doctrine ye shall know them,” but “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). I do not here despise sound doctrine, for we are exhorted to it. I only say what James said, “That faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). And how can men stand so firmly for sound doctrine while evidencing so little of its reality in their lives? Simply because they now imagine that the power of God rests no longer in the Spirit, but in the literal words themselves. The absence of the powerful manifestation of the Spirit of God that Paul knew gives these men little concern, because they are so certain they are using Paul’s words. That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their law, the same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. 

The Power of the Spirit - William Law