Chapter V: AUTOGRAPH CONCLUSION.--1. The Judaisers' motive (ch. vi. 12, 13) (4)

+III. The law does not admit of faith; it offers life only to the
doer+ (ver. 12).

Ver. 11. _Man is justified by Faith alone._--One day wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate's Staircase, the poor Saxon monk, Luther, was humbly creeping up those steps when he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, "The just shall live by faith!" He rises in amazement, he shudders at himself, he is ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him. He flies from the scene of his folly. It was in these words God then said, "Let there be light, and there was light" (Gen. i. 3).--_D'Aubigné._

Ver. 12. _The Difference between the Law and the Gospel._

+I. The law promises life to him who performs perfect obedience,+ and that for his works. The Gospel promises life to him who doeth nothing in the cause of his salvation, but only believes in Christ; and it promises salvation to him who believeth, yet not for his faith or for any works else, but for the merit of Christ. The law then requires doing to salvation, and the Gospel believing and nothing else.

+II. The law does not teach true repentance,+ neither is it any cause of it, but only an occasion. The Gospel only prescribes repentance and the practice of it, yet only as it is a fruit of our faith and as it is the way to salvation.

+III. The law requires faith in God,+ which is to put our affiance in him. The Gospel requires faith in Christ, the Mediator God-man; and this faith the law never knew.

+IV. The promises of the Gospel are not made to the work, but to the worker;+ and to the worker not for his work, but for Christ's sake, according to His work.

+V. The Gospel considers not faith as a virtue or work, but as an instrument,+ or hand, to apprehend Christ. Faith does not cause or procure our salvation, but as the beggar's hand it receives it, being wholly wrought and given of God.

+VI. This distinction of the law and the Gospel must be observed carefully,+ as the two have been often confounded. It has been erroneously stated that the law of Moses, written in tables of stone, is the law; the same law of Moses, written in the hearts of men by the Holy Ghost, is the Gospel. But I say again that the law written in our hearts is still the law of Moses. This oversight in mistaking the distinction of the law and the Gospel is and has been the ruin of the Gospel.--_Perkins._

Vers. 13, 14. _Redemption and its Issues._

+I. Redemption was effected by Christ enduring the penalty of
violated law+ (ver. 13).

+II. Redemption by Christ has brought blessing to all
nations.+--"That the blessing of Abraham might come on the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ" (ver. 14).

+III. The spiritual results of redemption are realised only by
faith.+--"That we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith" (ver. 14).

Ver. 13. _The Curse and Sentence of the Law_ lies on record against sinners, it puts in its demand against our acquittance, and lays an obligation upon us unto punishment. God will not reject nor destroy His law. Unless it be answered, there is no acceptance for sinners. Christ answered the curse of the law when He was made a curse for us, and so became, as to the obedience of the law, the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe. And as to the penalty that it threatened, He bore it, removed it, and took it out of the way. So hath He made way for forgiveness through the very heart of the law; it hath not one word to speak against the pardon of those who believe.--_John Owen._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 15-18.

_The Divine Covenant of Promise_--

+I. Is less susceptible of violation than any human covenant.+--"Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed [approved], no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto" (ver. 15). Common equity demands that a contract made between man and man is thoroughly binding and should be rigidly observed; and the civil law lends all its force to maintain the integrity of its clauses. How much more certain it is that the Divine covenant shall be faithfully upheld. If it is likely that a human covenant will not be interfered with, it is less likely the Divine covenant will be changed. Yet even a human covenant may fail; the Divine covenant never. It is based on the Divine Word which cannot fail, and its validity is pledged by the incorruptibility of the Divine character (Mal. iii. 6).

+II. Is explicit in defining the channel of its fulfilment.+--"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made; . . . to thy seed, which is Christ" (ver. 16). The promise is in the plural because the same promise was often repeated (Gen. xii. 3, 7, xv. 5, 18, xvii. 7, xxii. 18), and because it involved many things--earthly blessings to the literal children of Abraham in Canaan, and spiritual and heavenly blessings to his spiritual children; and both promised to Christ--the Seed and representative Head of the literal and spiritual Israel alike. Therefore the promise that in him "all families of the earth shall be blessed" joins in this one Seed--Christ--Jew and Gentile, as fellow-heirs on the same terms of acceptability--by grace through faith; not to some by promise, to others by the law, but to all alike, circumcised and uncircumcised, constituting but one seed in Christ. The law, on the other hand, contemplates the Jews and Gentiles as distinct seeds. God makes a covenant, but it is one of promise; whereas the law is a covenant of works. God makes His covenant of promise with the one Seed--Christ--and embraces others only as they are identified with and represented by Him (_Fausset_).

+III. Cannot be set aside by the law which was a subsequent revelation.+--"The covenant, . . . the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul" (ver. 17). The promise to Abraham was a prior settlement, and must take precedence, not only in time but also in authority, of the Mosaic law. It was a bold stroke of the apostle to thus shatter the supremacy of Mosaism; but the appeal to antiquity was an argument the most prejudiced Jew was bound to respect. "The law of Moses has its rights; it must be taken into account as well as the promise to Abraham. True; but it has no power to cancel or restrict the promise, older by four centuries and a half. The later must be adjusted to the earlier dispensation, the law interpreted by the promise. God has not made two testaments--the one solemnly committed to the faith and hope of mankind, only to be retracted and substituted by something of a different stamp. He could not thus stultify Himself. And we must not apply the Mosaic enactments, addressed to a single people, in such a way as to neutralise the original provisions made for the race at large. Our human instincts of good faith, our reverence for public compacts and established rights, forbid our allowing the law of Moses to trench upon the inheritance assured to mankind in the covenant of Abraham" (_Findlay_).

+IV. Imposed no conditions of legal obedience.+--"If the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise" (ver. 18). The law is a system of conditions--so much advantage to be gained by so much work done. This is all very well as a general principle. But the promise of God is based on a very different ground. It is an act of free, sovereign grace, engaging to confer certain blessings without demanding anything more from the recipient than faith, which is just the will to receive. The law imposes obligations man is incompetent to meet. The promise offers blessings all men need and all may accept. It simply asks the acceptance of the blessings by a submissive and trustful heart. The demands of the law are met and the provisions of the covenant of promise enjoyed by an act of faith.

+Lessons.+--1. _God has a sovereign right to give or withhold blessing._ 2. _The Divine covenant of promise is incapable of violation._ 3. _Faith in God is the simplest and sublimest method of obedience._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 15-18. _The Promise a Covenant confirmed._

+I. The promises made to Abraham are first made to Christ, and then in Christ to all that believe in Him.+--1. Learn the difference of the promises of the law and the Gospel. The promises of the law are directed and made to the person of every man particularly; the promises of the Gospel are first directed and made to Christ, and then by consequent to them that are by faith ingrafted into Christ. 2. We learn to acknowledge the communion that is between Christ and us. Christ died upon the cross, not as a private person, but as a public person representing His people. All died in Him, and with Him; in the same manner they must rise with Him to life. 3. Here is comfort against the consideration of our unworthiness. There is dignity and worthiness sufficient in Him. Our salvation stands in this, not that we know and apprehend him, but that He knows and apprehends us first of all.

+II. The promise made to Abraham was a covenant confirmed by oath.+--Abraham in the first making and in the confirmation thereof must be considered as a public person representing all the faithful. Here we see God's goodness. We are bound simply to believe His bare Word; yet in regard of our weakness He ratifies His promise by oath, that there might be no occasion of unbelief. What can we more require of him?

+III. If the promise might be disannulled, the law could not do it.+--1. The promise, or covenant, was made with Abraham, and continued by God four hundred and thirty years before the law was given. 2. If the law abolish the promise, then the inheritance must come by the law. But that cannot be. If the inheritance of eternal life be by the law, it is no more by the promise. But it is by the promise, because God gave it unto Abraham freely by promise; therefore, it comes not by the law. This giving was no private but a public donation. That which was given to Abraham was in him given to all that should believe as he did.--_Perkins._

Vers. 15-17. _Divine and Human Covenants._

I. A covenant, as between man and man, is honourably binding (ver.
15).

II. The Divine covenant made to Abraham ensures the fulfilment of
promises to all who believe as Abraham did (ver. 16).

III. The law cannot abrogate the Divine covenant of promise (ver. 17).

Ver 18. _Law and Promise._--1. So subtle is the spirit of error that it will seem to cede somewhat to truth, intending to prejudice the truth more than if it had ceded nothing. The opposers of justification by faith did sometimes give faith some place in justification and pleaded for a joint influence of works and faith, of law and promise. 2. The state of grace here and glory hereafter is the inheritance of the Lord's people, of which the land of Canaan was a type. There are only two ways of attaining a right to this inheritance--one by law, the other by promise. 3. There can be no mixture of these two, so that a right to heaven should be obtained partly by the merit of works and partly by faith in the promise. The only way of attaining it is by God's free gift, without the merit of works.--_Fergusson._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 19, 20.

_The Inferiority of the Law._

+I. It did not justify but condemn the sinner by revealing his sin.+--"It was added because of transgressions" (ver. 19). Law has no remedial efficacy. It reveals and emphasises the fact of sin. It has no terror while it is obeyed. When it is violated then it thunders, and with pitiless severity terrifies the conscience and inflicts unsparing punishment. There is no strain of mercy in its voice, or in the inflexibility of its methods. It surrenders the condemned to an anguish from which it offers no means of escape. It is said that, after the murder of Darnley, some of the wretches who were concerned in it were found wandering about the streets of Edinburgh crying penitently and lamentably for vengeance on those who had caused them to shed innocent blood.

+II. It was temporary in its operation.+--"Till the seed should come to whom the promise was made" (ver. 19). The work of the law was preparatory and educative. Centuries rolled away and the promised Seed was long in coming, and it seemed as if the world must remain for ever under the tutelage of the law. All the time the law was doing its work. God was long in fulfilling His promise because man was so slow to learn. When Christ, the promised Seed, appeared, the law was superseded. Its work was done. The preparatory gave place to the permanent; the reign of law was displaced by the reign of grace. The claims of the law were discharged once for all.

+III. Its revelation was through intermediaries.+--"It was ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator" (ver. 19). In the Jewish estimation the administration of the law by angels enhanced its splendour, and the pomp and ceremony with which Moses made known the will and character of Jehovah added to the impressiveness and superiority of the law. In the Christian view these very methods were evidences of defect and inferiority. The revelations of God by the law were veiled and intermediate; the revelation by Grace is direct and immediate. Under the law God was a distant and obscured personality, and the people unfit to enter His sacred presence; by the Gospel God is brought near to man and permitted to bask in the radiance of His revealed glory, without the intervention of a human mediator. The law, with its elaborate ceremonial and multiplied exactions, is a barrier between the soul and God.

+IV. It was contingent, not absolute, in its primal terms.+--"Now a Mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one" (ver. 20). Where a mediator is necessary unity is wanting--not simply in a numerical but in a moral sense, as a matter of feeling and of aim. There are separate interests, discordant views, to be consulted. This was true of Mosaism. It was not the absolute religion. The theocratic legislation of the Pentateuch is lacking in the unity and consistency of a perfect revelation. Its disclosures of God were refracted in a manifest degree by the atmosphere through which they passed. In the promise God spoke immediately and for Himself. The man of Abraham's faith sees God in His unity. The legalist gets his religion at second-hand, mixed with undivine elements. He projects on the Divine image confusing shadows of human imperfection (_Findlay_).

+Lessons.+--1. _The law is powerless to remove the sin it exposes._ 2. _The law had the defect of all preparatory dispensations._ 3. _The law imposes conditions it does not help to fulfil._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 19, 20. _The Law is for Transgressors._

+I. We are taught to examine and search our hearts by the law of God.+--1. When any sin is forbidden in any commandment of the law, under it all sins of the same kind are forbidden, all causes of them and all occasions. 2. A commandment negative includes the affirmative, and binds us not only to abstain from evil, but also to do the contrary good. 3. Every commandment must be understood with a curse annexed to it, though the curse be not expressed. 4. We must especially examine ourselves by the first and last commandments. The first forbids the first motions of our hearts against God, and the last forbids the first motions of our hearts against our neighbour.

+II. The law of God to be reverenced.+--1. Because it was ordained or delivered by angels. 2. We are to fear to break the least commandment, because the angels observe the keepers and breakers of it, and are ready to witness against them that offend. 3. If thou offend and break the law, repent with speed, for that is the desired joy of angels. 4. If thou sin and repent not, look for shame and confusion before God and His angels.

+III. God, the Author and Source of law, is one.+--1. He is unchangeable. 2. His unchangeableness the foundation of our comfort. 3. We should be unchangeable in faith, hope, love, good counsels, honest promises, and in the maintenance of true religion.--_Perkins._

Ver. 19. _The Use of the Law._

+I. It is a standard to measure our defects.+

+II. It is a sword to pierce our conscience.+

+III. It is a seal to certify that we are in the way of
grace.+--_Tholuck._

_No Trust in Legal Prescriptions._--St. Paul, with the sledge-hammer force of his direct and impassioned dialectics, shattered all possibility of trusting in legal prescriptions, and demonstrated that the law was no longer obligatory on Gentiles. He had shown that the distinction between clean and unclean meats was to the enlightened conscience a matter of indifference, that circumcision was nothing better than a physical mutilation, that ceremonialism was a yoke with which the free, converted Gentile had nothing to do, that we are saved by faith and not by works, that the law was a dispensation of wrath and menace introduced for the sake of transgressions, that so far from being, as all the Rabbis asserted, the one thing on account of which the universe had been created, the Mosaic code only possessed a transitory, subordinate, and intermediate character, coming in, as it were in a secondary way, between the promise of Abraham and the fulfilment of that promise in the Gospel of Christ.--_Dean Farrar._

_The Use of the Law under the Gospel._

+I. The law never was intended to supersede the Gospel as a means of life.+

+II. The most perfect edition of the Gospel, so far from having abolished the least tittle of the moral law, has established it.+

+III. The use of the law.+--1. To constitute probation. 2. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. 3. The law serves to give beauty and symmetry to the hidden man of the heart. 4. To vindicate the conduct of our Judge in dooming the impenitent to eternal death.

+Lessons.+--1. _Since the law as a covenant has been superseded by a covenant better adapted to our guilty and helpless circumstances, let us make a proper use of the mercy, acquaint ourselves with its demands, and abound in the holiness it enjoins._ 2. _Mark those who set aside the law, shun their company, and pray for their repentance._--_Iota._

Ver. 20. _The Unity of God and His Purpose regarding Man._--1. The covenant with Adam in his innocency was immediate, no mediator intervening to make them one; there was no disagreement betwixt them because of sin. 2. No man can attain heaven, or reap any advantage, except he be perfectly holy. God made no covenant of works with men on Mount Sinai, nor could they have reaped benefit from such a covenant as they were a sinful people, standing in need of a midsman betwixt God and them. 3. The Lord in all His dispensations is always one and like to Himself without shadow of turning. If any plead a right to heaven by the merit of their works, God will abate nothing of what He did once prescribe and require of man in the covenant of works.--_Fergusson._

_An Effectual Mediator._--Edward III., after defeating Philip of France at Creçy, laid siege to Calais, which, after an obstinate resistance of a year, was taken. He offered to spare the lives of the inhabitants on the condition that six of their principal citizens should be delivered up to him, with halters around their necks, to be immediately executed. When these terms were announced the rulers of the town came together, and the question was proposed, "Who will offer himself as an atonement for the city? Who will imitate Christ who gave Himself for the salvation of men?" The number was soon made up. On reaching the English camp they were received by the soldiers of Edward with every mark of commiseration. They appeared before the king. "Are these the principal inhabitants of Calais?" he inquired sternly. "Of France, my lord," they replied. "Lead them to execution." At this moment the queen arrived. She was informed of the punishment about to be inflicted on the six victims. She hastened to the king and pleaded for their pardon. At first he sternly refused, but her earnestness conquered, and the king yielded. When we submit our hearts as captives to the Father, and feel that we are condemned and lost, we have an effectual Mediator who stays the hand of justice.

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 21-25.

_The True Use of the Law_--

+I. Was not intended to bestow spiritual life.+--"If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law" (ver. 21). The law was not against the promises. It was a Divine method in dealing with man, and one Divine method never conflicts with another. It was intended to mediate between the promise and its fulfilment. It is not the enemy but the minister of grace. It did not profess to bestow spiritual life; but in its sacrifices and oblations pointed to the coming Christ who is "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom. x. 4).

+II. Was to reveal the universal domination of sin.+--"The Scripture hath concluded all under sin" (ver. 22). The Bible from the beginning and throughout its course, in its unvarying teaching, makes the world one vast prison-house with the law for gaoler, and mankind held fast in chains of sin, condemned and waiting for the punishment of death. Its perpetual refrain is, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Its impeachment covers the whole realm of human life, thought, and desire. "Every human life," says Martensen, "that has not yet become a partaker of redemption is a life under the law, in opposition to the life under grace. The law hovers over his life as an unfulfilled requirement; and, in the depth of his own being, remains as an indismissible but unsatisfied and unexpiated claim on him, which characterises such a human existence as sinful and guilt-laden."

+III. Was to teach the absolute necessity of faith in order to escape its condemnation.+--"But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed" (ver. 23). The law was all the while standing guard over its subjects, watching and checking every attempt to escape, but intending to hand them over in due time to the charge of faith. The law posts its ordinances, like so many sentinels, round the prisoner's cell. The cordon is complete. He tries again and again to break out; the iron circle will not yield. But deliverance will yet be his. The day of faith approaches. It dawned long ago in Abraham's promise. Even now its light shines into his dungeon, and he hears the word of Jesus, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace." Law, the stern gaoler, has after all been a good friend if it has reserved him for this. It prevents the sinner escaping to a futile and illusive freedom (_Findlay_).

+IV. Was to act as a moral tutor to train us to the maturity and higher freedom of a personal faith in Christ.+--"Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," etc. (vers. 24, 25). The schoolmaster, or pedagogue, among the Greeks meant a faithful servant entrusted with the care of the boy from childhood, to keep him from evil, physical and moral, and accompany him to his amusements and studies. "If then the law is a pedagogue," says Chrysostom, "it is not hostile to grace, but its fellow-worker; but should it continue to hold us fast when grace has come, then it would be hostile." Judaism was an education for Christianity. It trained the childhood of the race. It humbled and distressed the soul with the consciousness of sin. It revealed the utter inadequacy of all its provisions to justify. It brought the despairing soul to Christ and showed that the true way to righteousness was by personal faith in Him.

+Lessons.+--1. _Law is the revealer of sin._ 2. _Law demands universal righteousness._ 3. _Law is a training for faith._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 21, 22. _The Law not contrary to the Divine Promise._--1. It is the way of some to make one Scripture contradict another, yet their bold allegations will be found always false, and truth to be every most consonant and never contrary to itself. 2. So exact and full is the righteousness required in order to life, and so far short do all mankind come of it, that no works of our own, done in obedience to the law, can amount to that righteousness. 3. Though all men by nature be under sin, it is a matter of no small difficulty to convince any man of it. The work of the law, accusing, convincing, or condemning the sinner, is compared to the work of a judge detaining a malefactor in prison which is not effectuated but with force and violence. 4. The law by its threatenings prepares and necessitates the soul to embrace salvation by faith in the Christ revealed in the promise.--_Fergusson._

Ver. 22. _The Great Prison; or, All concluded under Sin._--1. Satan does indeed draw and drive men into sin--this is the accursed work of his restless, Sabbath-less life; and when he has got them there he binds them fast and will not let them flee from his toils. He builds a high wall of sin all round them so that they shall not look over it into the goodly land beyond, and here he shuts them up together, sinner with sinner, a never-ending ghastly multitude, that they may encourage and pamper each other in wickedness, and that no example, no voice of holiness, may ever reach and startle them. But God never drove, never drew, any man into sin. He is calling us to come out from the deadly land, from the loathsome, plague-breathing dungeon. So, when the Scripture concludes, or shuts all men up together under sin, it is not by driving them into sin, but for the sake of calling them out of it. 2. With all the light of the Scripture shining around us, with the law of God ever sounding in our ears, and the life of Christ set continually before us, how prone are we to forget our sinfulness, to turn away from the thought of it, to fancy we are as good as we need be, and that, though we might certainly be better, yet it does not matter much! How apt are we still to forget that we are concluded under sin, to forget that we are shut up in a prison! Although the souls of so many millions are lying around us, bloated with the poison of sin, how tardily do we acknowledge that the poison by which they perished must also be deadly to us! 3. Suppose you were to be carried before an earthly court of justice, and that one sweeping accusation were to be brought against you; suppose you were found guilty, and the excuse you set up were the complete proof of your guilt,--what would follow? The judge would straightway pass sentence upon you, and you would be condemned to suffer punishment according to the measure of your offence. And must we not expect that the course of things should be the very same when you are carried before a heavenly court of justice? 4. When a man's eyes are opened to see the prison in which he is shut up, to see and feel the chains that are fast bound round his soul and have eaten into it; when he has learnt to see and know that the pleasures, whatever they may, of sin are only, like the flesh-pots of Egypt, intoxicating drugs, given to him to deprive him of all sense of his captivity,--then will he long for a deliverer, rejoice on hearing of his approach, hail him when he comes in view, and follow him whithersoever he may lead. As unbelief is the one great universal sin, in which all mankind are concluded, as it is only from having let slip our faith in God that we have yielded our hearts to the temptations of the world and given ourselves up to its idolatries, so it is only through faith that we can be brought back to God--that we can receive the promise given to those who believe.--_J. C. Hare._

Ver. 23. _"Shut up unto the faith." The Reasonableness of Faith._--The mode of conception is military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one, and that one leads those, who are compelled to take it, to the faith of the Gospel. Out of the leading varieties of taste and sentiment which obtain in the present age we may collect something which may be turned into an instrument of conviction for reclaiming men from their delusions and shutting them up to the faith.

+I. There is the school of natural religion.+--It is founded on the competency of the human mind to know God by the exercise of its own faculties, to clothe Him in the attributes of its own demonstration, to serve Him by a worship and a law of its own discovery, and to assign to Him a mode of procedure in the administration of this vast universe upon the strength and plausibility of its own theories. They recognise the judicial government of God over moral and accountable creatures. They hold there is a law. One step more, and they are fairly shut up to the faith. That law has been violated.

+II. There is the school of classical morality.+--It differs from the former school in one leading particular. It does not carry in its speculations so distinct and positive a reference to the Supreme Being. Our duties to God are viewed as a species of moral accomplishment, the effect of which is to exalt and embellish the individual. We ask them to look at man as he is and compare him with man as they would have him to be. If they find that he falls miserably short of their ideal standard of excellence, what is this but making a principle of their own the instrument of shutting them up unto the faith of the Gospel, or at least shutting them up into one of the most peculiar of its doctrines, the depravity of our nature, or the dismal ravage which the power of sin has made upon the moral constitution of the species? This depravity the Gospel proposes to do away.

+III. There is the school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment.+--It differs from the school of morality in this--the one makes virtue its idol because of its rectitude, the other makes virtue its idol because of its beauty, and the process of reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith is the same in both. However much we may love perfection and aspire after it, yet there is some want, some disease, in the constitution of man which prevents his attainment of it, that there is a feebleness of principle about him, that the energy of his practice does not correspond to the fair promises of his fancy, and however much he may delight in an ideal scene of virtue and moral excellence, there is some lurking malignity in his constitution which, without the operation of that mighty power revealed to us in the Gospel, makes it vain to wish and hopeless to aspire after it.--_Dr. Thomas Chalmers._

Vers. 24, 25. _The Law our Schoolmaster._--There was a time when God put His world under a schoolmaster; then it would have been preposterous to apply faith. There is a time when a larger spirit has come, and then it would be going back to use law.

+I. The uses of restraint in the heart's education.+--1. _The first use of law is to restrain from open violence._ It is necessary for those who feel the inclination to evil, and so long as the inclination remains so far must a man be under law. Imagine a governor amidst a population of convicts trusting to high principle. Imagine a parent having no fixed hours, no law in his household, no punishment for evil. There is a morbid feeling against punishment; but it is God's method.

2. _The second use of restraint is to show the inward force of evil._--A steam-engine at work in a manufactory is so quiet and gentle that a child might put it back. But interpose a bar of iron many inches thick, and it cuts through as if it were so much leather. Introduce a human limb--it whirls round, and the form of man is in one moment a bleeding, mangled, shapeless mass. It is restraint that manifests this unsuspected power. In the same way law discovers the strength of evil in our hearts.

3. _The third use is to form habits of obedience._--In that profession which is specially one of obedience--the military profession--you cannot mistake the imparted type of character. Immediate, prompt obedience, no questioning "why?" Hence comes their decision of character. Hence, too, their happiness. Would you have your child, happy, decided, manly? Teach him to obey. It is an error to teach a child to act on reason, or to expect reasons why a command is given. Better it is that he should obey a mistaken order than be taught to see that it is mistaken. A parent must be the master in his own house.

4. _The fourth use is to form habits of faith._--As Judaism was a system calculated to nurture habits of obedience, so was it one which nourished the temper of faith. All education begins with faith. The child does not know the use of the alphabet, but he trusts. The boy beginning mathematics takes on trust what he sees no use in. The child has to take parental wisdom for granted. Happy the child that goes on believing that nothing is wiser, better, greater, than his father! Blessed spirit of confiding trust which is to be transferred to God.

+II. The time when restraint may be laid aside.+--1. _When self-command is obtained._ Some of us surely there are who have got beyond childish meanness: we could not be mean; restraint is no longer needed; we are beyond the schoolmaster. Some of us there are who have no inclination to intemperance; childish excess in eating and drinking exists no longer. Some of us there are who no longer love indolence. We have advanced beyond it. The law may be taken away, for we are free from law. True Christian liberty is this--self-command, to have been brought to Christ, to do right and love right, without a law of compulsion to school into doing it.

2. _When the state of justification by faith has been attained._--There are two states of justification--by the law and by faith. Justification by the law implies a scrupulous and accurate performance of minute acts of obedience in every particular; justification by faith is acceptance with God, not because a man is perfect, but because he does all in a trusting, large, generous spirit, actuated by a desire to please God. In Christianity there are few or no definite laws--all men are left to themselves.

3. _Restraint must be laid aside when the time of faith has come, whether faith itself have come or not._--It is so in academical education. We may have attained the full intellectual comprehension of the Gospel, but religious goodness has not kept pace with it, and the man wakes to conviction that the Gospel is a name and the powers of the world to come are not in him. You cannot put him to school again. Fear will not produce goodness. Forms will not give reverence. System will not confer freedom. Therefore the work of childhood and youth must be done while we are young, when the education is not too late.--_F. W. Robertson._

Ver. 24. _The Law preparing for Christ._

+I. The law led men to Christ by foreshadowing Him.+--This was true of the ceremonial part of it. The ceremonies meant more than the general duty of offering to God praise and sacrifice, since this might have been secured by much simpler rites. What was the meaning of the solemn and touching observance of the Jewish Day of Atonement? We know that what passed in that old earthly sanctuary was from first to last a shadow of the majestic self-oblation of the true High Priest of Christendom, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Each ceremony was felt to have some meaning beyond the time then present, and so it fostered an expectant habit of mind; and as the ages passed these expectations thus created converged more and more towards a coming Messiah, and in a subordinate but real way the ceremonial law did its part in leading the nation to the school of Christ.

+II. By creating in man's conscience a sense of want which Christ alone could relieve.+--This was the work of the moral law, of every moral precept in the books of Moses, but especially of those most sacred and authoritative precepts which we know as the Ten Commandments. So far from furnishing man with a real righteousness, so far from making him such as he should be, correspondent to the true ideal of his nature, the law only inflicted on every conscience that was not fatally benumbed a depressing and overwhelming conviction that righteousness, at least in the way of legal obedience, was a thing impossible. And this conviction of itself prepared men for a righteousness which should be not the product of human efforts, but a gift from heaven--a righteousness to be attained by the adhesion of faith to the perfect moral Being, Jesus Christ, so that the believer's life becomes incorporate with His.

+III. By putting men under a discipline which trained them for Christ.+--What is the Divine plan for training, whether men or nations? Is it not this--to begin with rule and to end with principle, to begin with law and to end with faith, to begin with Moses and to end with Christ? God began with rule. He gave the Mosaic law, and the moral parts of that law being also laws of God's own essential nature could not possibly be abrogated; but as rules of life the Ten Commandments were only a preparation for something beyond them. In the Christian revelation God says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." When you have done this, and He on His part has by His Spirit infused into you His Divine life so that you are one with Him, you will not depend any longer mainly upon rules of conduct. Justification by faith is so far from being moral anarchy that it is the absorption of rule into the higher life of principle. In the experience of the soul faith corresponds to the empire of principle in the growth of individual character and in the development of national life, while the law answers to that elementary stage in which outward rules are not yet absorbed into principle.--_H. P. Liddon._

_The Law a Schoolmaster._

+I. The Jewish religion brought men to Christ by the light, the constraining force, of prophecy.+--First, a human deliverance of some kind, then a personal Saviour, is announced. He was exactly what prophecy had foretold. He Himself appealed to prophecy as warranting His claims.

+II. By that ceremonial law which formed so important a part of it.+--The Jewish ceremonial pointed to Christ and His redemptive work from first to last. The epistle to the Hebrews was written to show this--that the ceremonial law was far from being a final and complete rule of life and worship, did but prefigure blessings that were to follow it, that it was a tutor to lead men to the school of Christ.

+III. By creating a sense of moral need that Christ alone could satisfy.+--The moral law--God's essential, indestructible moral nature in its relation to human life, thrown for practical purposes into the form of commandments--is essentially, necessarily beyond criticism; but when given to sinful man it does, but without grace, discover a want which it cannot satisfy. It enhanced the acting sense of unpardoned sin before a holy God. It convinced man of his moral weakness, as well as of his guilt, of his inability without the strengthening grace of Christ ever to obey it.

+Lessons.+--1. _We see a test of all religious privileges or gifts: Do they or do they not lead souls to Christ?_ 2. _Observe the religious use of all law--to teach man to know his weakness and to throw himself on a higher power for pardon and strength._ 3. _We see the exceeding preciousness of Christ's Gospel--the matchless value of that faith which lives in the heart of the Church of God.--H. P. Liddon._

_The Progress of Revelation._

+I. The law was our schoolmaster as giving precepts in which principles were involved but not expressly taught.+

+II. As teaching inadequate and not perfect duties+--a part instead of the whole, which was to develop into the whole. Examples--the institution of the Temple worship; the observance of the Sabbath; the third commandment.

+Lessons:+--1. _Revelation is education._ 2. _Revelation is progressive._ 3. _The training of the character in God's revelation has always preceded the illumination of the intellect.--F. W. Robertson._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 26-29.

_The Dignity of Sonship with God_--

+I. Enjoyed by all who believe in Christ.+--"For ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (ver. 26). Faith in Christ emancipates the soul from the trammels and inferior status of the tutorial training and lifts it to the higher and more perfect relationship of a free son of God. The believer is no longer a pupil, subject to the surveillance and restrictions of the pedagogue; but a son, enjoying immediate and constant intercourse with the Father and all the privileges and dignities of a wider freedom. The higher relation excludes the lower; an advance has been made that leaves the old life for ever behind. The life now entered upon is a life of faith, which is a superior and totally different order of things from the suppressive domination of the law.

+II. It is to be invested with the character of Christ.+--"For as many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ" (ver. 27). For if Christ is Son of God, and thou hast put on Him, having the Son in thyself and being made like to Him, thou wast brought into one kindred and one form of being with Him (_Chrysostom_). To be baptised into Christ is not the mere mechanical observance of the rite of baptism; the rite is the recognition and public avowal of the exercise of faith in Christ. In the Pauline vocabulary baptised is synonymous with believing. Faith invests the soul with Christ, and joyfully appropriates the estate and endowments of the filial relationship. Baptism by its very form--the normal and most expressive form of primitive baptism, the descent into and rising from the symbolic waters--pictured the soul's death with Christ, its burial and its resurrection in Him, its separation from the life of sin, and entrance upon the new career of a regenerated child of God (Rom. vi. 3-14).

+III. Implies such a complete union with Christ as to abolish all secondary distinctions.+--"For there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (ver. 28). All distinctions of nationality, social status, and sex--necessary as they may be in the worldly life--disappear in the blending of human souls in the loftier relationship of sons of God. The Gospel is universal in its range and provisions and raises all who believe in Christ to a higher level than man could ever reach under the Mosaic regimen. To add circumcision to faith would be not to rise but to sink from the state of sons to that of serfs. Christ is the central bond of unity to the whole human race; faith in Him is the realisation by the individual of the honours and raptures of that unity.

+IV. Is to be entitled to the inheritance of joint heirship with Christ.+--"If ye be Christ's, then are ye . . . heirs according to the promise" (ver. 29). In Christ the lineal descent from David becomes extinct. He died without posterity. But He lives and reigns over a vaster territory than David ever knew; and all who are of His spiritual seed, Jew or Gentile, share with Him the splendours of the inheritance provided by the Father. Here the soul reaches its supreme glory and joy. In Worcester Cathedral there is a slab with just one doleful word on it as a record of the dead buried beneath. That word is _Miserrimus._ No name, no date; nothing more of the dead than just this one word to say he who lay there was or is _most miserable._ Surely, he had missed the way home to the Father's house and the Father's love, else why this sad record? But in the Catacombs at Rome there is one stone recently found inscribed with the single word _Felicissima._ No name, no date again, but a word to express that the dead Christian sister was _most happy._ Most happy; why? Because she had found the Father's house and love, and that peace which the storms of life, the persecutions of a hostile world, and the light afflictions of time could neither give nor take away.

+Lessons.+--1. _Faith confers higher privileges than the law._ 2. _Faith in Christ admits the soul into sonship with God._ 3. _The sons of God share in the fulness of the Christly inheritance._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 26-29. _Baptism._

+I. The doctrine of Rome.+--Christ's merits are instrumentally applied by baptism; original sin is removed by a change of nature; a new character is imparted to the soul; a germinal principle or seed of life is miraculously given; and all this in virtue, not of any condition in the recipient, nor of any condition except that of the due performance of the rite. The objections to this doctrine are: 1. _It assures baptism to be not the testimony to a fact, but the fact itself._ Baptism proclaims the child of God; the Romanist says it creates him. 2. _It is materialism of the grossest kind._ 3. _It makes Christian life a struggle for something that is lost, instead of a progress to something that lies before._

+II. The doctrine of modern Calvinism.+--Baptism admits all into the visible Church, but into the invisible Church only a special few. The real benefit of baptism only belongs to the elect. With respect to others, to predicate of them regeneration in the highest sense is at best an ecclesiastical fiction, said in the judgment of charity. You are not God's child until you become such consciously. On this we remark: 1. _This judgment of charity ends at the baptismal font._ 2. _This view is identical with the Roman one in this respect--that it creates the fact instead of testifying to it._ 3. _Is pernicious in its results in the matter of education._

+III. The doctrine of the Bible.+--Man is God's child, and the sin of the man consists in perpetually living as if it were false. To be a son of God is one thing; to know that you are and call Him Father is another. Baptism authoritatively reveals and pledges to the individual that which is true of the race. 1. _This view prevents exclusiveness and spiritual pride._ 2. _Protests against the notion of our being separate units in the Divine life._ 3. _Sanctifies materialism.--F. W. Robertson._

Ver. 26. _The Children of God._

+I. We are all children.+

+II. We are all children of God.+

+III. We are all children of God through faith.+

+IV. We are all children of God in Christ Jesus.+--_Dr. Beet._

_God's Children._

+I. If thou be God's child, surely He will provide all things
necessary for soul and body.+--Our care must be to do the duty
that belongs to us; when this is done our care is ended. They
who drown themselves in worldly cares live like fatherless
children.

+II. In that we are children we have liberty to come into the
presence of God.+

+III. Nothing shall hurt those who are the children of God.+

+IV. Walk worthy of your profession and calling.+--Be not vassals of
sin and Satan; carry yourselves as King's sons.

+V. Our care must be to resemble Christ.+

+VI. We must have a desire and love to the Word of God+ that we may
grow by it.

+VII. We must have afflictions, if we be God's children,+ for He
corrects all His children.--_Perkins._

Vers. 27, 28. _The Christly Character_--

+I. Acquired by a spiritual union with Christ.+--"Baptised into
Christ."

+II. Is a complete investiture with Christ.+--"Have put on Christ."

+III. Is a union with Christ that absorbs all conventional
distinctions+ (ver. 28).

Ver. 27. _Profession without Hypocrisy._--Hypocrisy is professing without practising. Men profess without feeling and doing or are hypocrites in nothing so much as in their prayers. Let a man set his heart upon learning to pray and strive to learn, and no failures he may continue to make in his manner of praying are sufficient to cast him from God's favour. Let him but be in earnest, striving to master his thoughts and to be serious, and all the guilt of his incidental failings will be washed away in his Lord's blood. We profess to be saints, to be guided by the highest principles, and to be ruled by the Spirit of God. We have long ago promised to believe and obey. It is true we cannot do these things aright--nay, even with God's help we fall short of duty. Nevertheless, we must not cease to profess. There is nothing so distressing to a true Christian as to have to prove himself such to others, both as being conscious of his own numberless failings and from his dislike of display. Christ has anticipated the difficulties of his modesty. He does not allow such a one to speak for himself; He speaks for him. Let us endeavour to enter more and more fully into the meaning of our own prayers and professions; let us humble ourselves for the very little we do and the poor advance we make; let us avoid unnecessary display of religion. Thus we shall, through God's grace, form within us the glorious mind of Christ.--_Newman._

_Teachings of Baptism_--

I. +Our baptism must put us in mind that we are admitted and received into the family of God.+

II. +Our baptism in the name of the Trinity must teach us to know and acknowledge God aright.+

III. +Our baptism must be unto us a storehouse of comfort in time of need.+

IV. +Baptism is a putting on of Christ.+--Alluding to the custom of those who were baptised in the apostle's days putting off their garments when they were baptised, and putting on new garments after baptism. 1. In that we are to put on Christ we are reminded of our moral nakedness. 2. To have a special care of the trimming and garnishing of our souls. 3. Though we be clothed with Christ in baptism, we must further desire to be clothed upon--clad with immortality.--_Perkins._

Ver. 28. _All are One in Christ._

+I. People of all nations, all conditions, and all sexes.+

II. They who are of great birth and high condition must be put in
mind not to be high-minded, nor despise them of low degree,
+for all are one in Christ.+

+III. All believers must be of one heart and mind.+

+IV. We learn not to hate any man, but do good to all.+--Men turn
their swords and spears into mattocks and scythes, because they
are one with Christ by the bond of one Spirit.--_Perkins._

Ver. 29. _The Promise of Grace._--The specific form of the whole Gospel is promise, which God gives in the Word and causes to be preached. The last period of the world is the reign of grace. Grace reigns in the world only as promise. Grace has nothing to do with law and requisition of law; therefore, the word of that grace can be no other than a word of promise. The promise of life in Christ Jesus is the word of the new covenant. The difference between the Gospel of the old covenant and that of the new rests alone on the transcendently greater glory of its promise.--_Harless._

_Heirs according to the Promise._

+I. The basest person, if he believes in Christ, is in the place of
Abraham,+ and succeeds him in the inheritance of the kingdom of
heaven.