[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For knowing not the righteousness of our (τοῦ) God,= His way of being just, yet the Justifier, =and seeking to set up their own righteousness,= to construct for themselves a claim which should "stand in judgment," =they did not submit to the righteousness of our (τοῦ) God,= when it appeared before them, embodied in "the Lord our Righteousness." They _aspired_ to acceptance. God bade them _submit_ to it. In their view, it was a matter of attainment; an ascent to a difficult height, where the climber might exult in his success. As He presented it, it was a matter of surrender, as when a patient, given over, places himself helpless in a master-healer's hands, for a recovery which is to be due to those hands alone, and to be celebrated only to their praise.[169] Alas for such "ignorance" in these earnest souls; for such a failure in Israel to strike the true line of "knowledge"! For it was a guilty failure. The Law had been indicating all the while that their Dispensation was not its own end, but one vast complex means to shut man up to a Redeemer who was at once to satisfy every type, and every oracle, and to supply "the impossible of the Law" (viii. 3), by giving Himself to be the believer's vicarious Merit. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For the Law's end,= its Goal, its Final Cause in the plan of redemption, =is--Christ, unto righteousness,= to effect and secure this wonderful acceptance, =for every one who believes.= Yes, He is no arbitrary sequel to the Law; He stands organically related to it. And to this the Law itself is witness, both by presenting an inexorable and condemning standard as its only possible code of acceptance, and by mysteriously pointing the soul away from that code, in its quest for mercy, to something altogether different, at once accessible and divine. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For Moses writes down (γράφει)= thus =the righteousness= got =from the Law, "The man who does[170] them, shall live in it"[171]= (Levit. xviii. 5); it is a matter of personal action and personal meriting alone. Thus the code, feasible and beneficent indeed on the plane of national and social life, which is its lower field of action, is necessarily fatal to fallen man when the question lies between his conscience and the eternal Judge. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But the righteousness= got =from faith,= the acceptance received by surrendering trust, =thus speaks= (Deut. xxx. 12-14)--in Moses' words indeed, (and this is one main point in the reasoning, that _he_ is witness,) yet as it were with a personal voice of its own, deep and tender; ="Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend to the heaven?" that is, to bring down Christ,= by human efforts, by a climbing merit; [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] ="or, Who shall descend into the abyss? that is, to bring up Christ from the dead,=" as if His victorious Sacrifice needed your supplement in order to its resurrection-triumph. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But what does it say? "Near