Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume IMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume I
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
And then, if any one should feel disposed to ask, Does not the line of
argument which we have been pursuing tend to rob the law of its
characteristic glory? We reply, Most assuredly not. So far from this,
the law was never so magnified, never so vindicated, never so
established, never so glorified, as by that precious work which forms
the imperishable foundation of all the privileges, the blessings, the
dignities, and the glories of Christianity. The blessed apostle
anticipates and answers this very question in the earlier part of his
epistle to the Romans. "Do we then," he says, "make void the law
through faith? Far be the thought; yea, we establish the law." How
could the law be more gloriously vindicated, honored, and magnified
than in the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ? Will any one
seek, for a moment, to maintain the extravagant notion that it is
magnifying the law to put Christians under it? We fondly trust the
reader will not. Ah! no; all this line of things must be completely
abandoned by those whose privilege it is to walk in the light of the
new creation; who know Christ as their life and Christ as their
righteousness, Christ their sanctification, Christ their great
exemplar, Christ their model, Christ their all and in all; who find
their motive for obedience, not in the fear of the curses of a broken
law, but in the love of Christ, according to those exquisitely beautiful
words, "The love of Christ"--not the law of Moses--"constraineth
us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all
dead. And He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose
again." (2 Cor. v.)
Could the law ever produce aught like this? Impossible. But, blessed
forever be the God of all grace, "what the law could not do," not
because it was not holy, just, and good, but "in that it was weak
through the flesh"--the workman was all right, but the material was
rotten, and nothing could be made of it; but "God sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who," as risen with Christ, linked with Him by the Holy Ghost, in the
power of a new and everlasting life, "walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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