(1.) The first thing that is conspicuously clear is that he had discovered its true character. When he was a legalist he had no idea of its exalted standard; but, when God called him, his eyes were opened to behold its perfection. It is a curious fact that those who hope to save themselves by their doings are almost certain to entertain but low and limited notions of the law: they think of it as some low standard within their own reach; so they are always endeavouring to fulfil it, and though always failing, are never really troubled at their failure; but, when God opens their heart, they discover its exalted holiness, and find themselves to be nothing better than dead men before it. This is just what had happened to St. Paul. He lived in early life as an earnest, religious, and well-conducted young man, and he was satisfied with himself. ‘Touching the righteousness which is in the law,’ as he says himself (Phil. iii. 6), he was ‘blameless.’ He went through all the Jewish worship as correctly as possible, and omitted nothing: but he knew nothing of the claims of the law on his whole heart and all his powers; he simply regarded it as a collection of rules,—and he thought he did well. So he says, in verse nine, ‘I was alive without the law once.’ His ignorance of the law made him think himself alive; but God had after a time opened his eyes, and he discovered its exalted holiness. He saw it expounded in the teaching of our Lord, and exhibited in His life; he found it was nothing less than the perfect will of a perfect God; and all his own poor, feeble, miserable doings shrank away as dead things before the holiness of God; and thus he adds, ‘The commandment came, and I died.’ Now this change had taken place when he wrote the Epistle, so that the law was no longer to him a mere skeleton of form, but had appeared before him as the great expression of the mind of God. And now how did he regard it? This leads to a second point.