Here, then, we have one of the very finest statements of the truth as to practical Christianity any where to be found. But what specially claims our attention just now is, the very marked and beautiful way in which the gospel of God opens up the path of the true believer between the two fatal errors of legality on the one side and carnal laxity on the other. Verse 19, in the passage just quoted, contains the divine remedy for both these deadly evils. To all--whoever or wherever they are--who would seek to put the Christian under the law, in any shape or for any object whatsoever, our apostle exclaims, in the ears of dissembling Jews, with Peter at their head, and as an answer to all the law-teachers of every age, "_I am dead to law_." What can the law have to say to a dead man? Nothing. The law applies to a living man, to curse him and kill him because he has not kept it. It is a very grave mistake indeed to teach that the law is dead or abolished. It is nothing of the sort. It is alive in all its force, in all its stringency, in all its majesty, in all its unbending dignity. It would be a very serious mistake to say that the law of England against murder is dead; but if a man is dead, the law no longer applies to him, inasmuch as he has passed entirely out of its range. But how is the believer dead to law? The apostle replies, "I through law am dead to law." The law had brought the sentence of death into his conscience, as we read in Romans vii, "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be into death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me." But there is more than this. The apostle goes on to say, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And here is the triumphant answer of the Christian to those who say that inasmuch as the Mosaic law is abrogated, there is no longer any demand for the legal restraint under which the Jews were called to live. To all who would seek liberty for self-indulgence, the answer is, "I am dead to law, [not that I might give a loose rein to the flesh, but] that I might live unto God." Thus nothing can be more complete, nothing more morally beautiful, than the answer of true Christianity to legality on the one hand and licentiousness on the other. Self crucified; sin condemned; new life in Christ; a life to be lived to God; a life of faith in the Son of God; the motive-spring of that life, the constraining love of Christ--what can exceed this? Will any one, in view of the moral glories of Christianity, contend for putting believers under the law, putting them back into the flesh--back into the old creation--back to the sentence of death in the conscience--back to bondage, darkness, distance, fear of death, condemnation?