+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._