The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DeuteronomyHarper, Andrew
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy
Harper, Andrew
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
Nor does St. Paul's judgment as to the meaning and use of law,
in Galatians, when rightly understood, contradict this. No doubt
he seems to say that the Mosaic law by its very nature as law is
incompatible with grace, that it necessarily stands out of relation
to faith, and that its principle is a purely external one, so much
wages for so much work. Further, he clearly regards it as having
been interpolated into the history of Israel between the promises
given to Abraham and the fulfilment of them in the redemption by
Christ, and as having served only to increase sin and to drive men
thus to Christ. But when he says this he is replying mainly to the
Pharisaic view of the law which was represented by the Judaizers,
and finds himself all the more at home in refuting it that it was
his own view before he became a Christian. According to that view,
the whole law, both the moral and ceremonial provisions of it, was
necessary to obtain moral righteousness, and the mere doing of the
legally prescribed things gave a claim to the promised reward. So
interpreted, law had all the evil qualities he states, and stood
in absolute hostility to grace and faith, the great Christian
principles. The only difficulty is that St. Paul does not say, as we
should expect him to do, that originally the law was not meant to
be so regarded. He seems to admit by his silence that the Pharisaic
view of the law was the right one. But if he does, he cannot have
meant to include Deuteronomy. For there law is made to have its root
and ground in grace. It is given to Israel as a token of the free
love of God, and it is a law of life which, if kept, would make
them a peculiar people unto God. Further, love to God is to be the
motive from which all obedience springs, so that this law is bound
up with both grace and faith. But the probability is that St. Paul
admits the Pharisaic view only because it is that view with which
alone he has to contend in the case in hand. For in Romans vii. he
gives us quite another conception of the Mosaic law.[70] There he is
thinking of it mainly from an ethical point of view, and he regards
it as full of the Spirit of God, as a norm of moral life which not
only continues to be valid in Christianity, but which finds in the
Christian life the very fulfilment which it was intended to have.
It presses home too the moral ideal upon the man with extraordinary
power, and marks and emphasises the terrible divergence between
his aspirations and his actual performance. This is a much higher
office than that which he assigns to law in Galatians; and hence
one gathers that he is not speaking in Galatians exhaustively and
conclusively, but is condemning rather a way of regarding the Mosaic
law with which he had once sympathised than that law in its own
essential character. In its moral aspects, as represented by the
Decalogue, the law is of eternal obligation. From it comes the light
which brings to the Christian that moral unrest and dissatisfaction
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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