And yet only the ceaseless fulfilment of the whole Law can save mankind from justice. We are all sinners. [335] So the Law indeed awakened the knowledge of guilt, and brought sin to light through its violation; but it has at the same time increased the guilt. [336] It has shown itself to be a strict teacher and taskmaster in righteousness, without, however, itself leading to righteousness. So little has it proved to be the desired means of salvation, that it may equally be said of it that it was given by God not for the purpose of saving mankind, but only to make it still more miserable. Consequently Paul would rather attribute the mediation of the Law of Moses not to God himself but to his angels, in order to relieve God of the guilt of the Law. [337] This circumstance is of so much the more consequence for mankind, because the sin aroused by the Law unresistingly drew death in its train; and that deprived them also of the last possibility of becoming equal to their higher spiritual nature. So is man placed midway between light and darkness--a pitiable Being. His spirit, that is kin with God, draws him upwards; and the evil spirit and dæmons drag him downwards, the evil spirits who rule this world and who lure him into sin--and who are at bottom nothing but mythical personifications of man's sinful and fleshly desires. Christ now enters this world of darkness and of sin. As a man among men, he enters the sphere over which the flesh and sin have power, and must die as other men. But for the incarnate God death is not what it is in the ordinary sense. For him it is only the liberation from the incongruous condition of the flesh. When Christ dies, he merely strips off the fetters of the flesh and leaves the prison of the body, leaves the sphere over which sin, death, and evil spirits hold their sway. He, the God-man, dies to the sin, which was once unknown to him, once and for all. By prevailing over the power of death in his resurrection, the Son regains, by means of death, his original individual existence, perpetual life in and with the Father. [338] Thus also does he attain mastery over the Law, for this rules only in so far as there are fleshly men of earth, and ceases to hold good for him at the moment when Christ raises himself above the flesh and returns to his pure spiritual nature. Were there the possibility for mankind of similarly dying to their flesh, then would they be redeemed, as Christ was, from sin, death, and the Law.