[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =Where then is our (ἡ) boasting? It is shut out. By means of what law? Of works? No, but by means of faith's law,= the institute, the ordinance, which lays it upon us not to deserve, but to confide. And who can analyse or describe the joy and rest of the soul from which at last is "_shut out_" the foul inflation of a religious "_boast_"? We have praised ourselves, we have valued ourselves, on one thing or another supposed to make us worthy of the Eternal. We may perhaps have had some specious pretexts for doing so; or we may have "boasted" (such boastings are not unknown) of nothing better than being a little less ungodly, or a little more manly, than some one else. But this is over now for ever, in principle; and we lay its practice under our Redeemer's feet to be destroyed. And great is the rest and gladness of sitting down at His feet, while the door is shut and the key is turned upon our self-applause. There is no holiness without that "exclusion"; and there is no happiness where holiness is not. [Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =For we reckon,[42]= we conclude, we gather up our facts and reasons thus, =that man is justified[43] by faith, apart from,= irrespective of, =works of law.= In other words, the meriting cause lies wholly in Christ, and wholly outside the man's conduct. We have seen, implicitly, in the passage above, verses 10-18, what is meant here by "_works of Law_," or by "_works of the Law_." The thought is not of ritual prescription, but of moral rule. The law-breakers of verses 10-18 are men who commit violent deeds, and speak foul words, and fail to do what is good. The law-keeper, by consequence, is the man whose conduct in such respects is right, negatively and positively. And the "_works of the law_" are such deeds accordingly. So here "_we conclude_" that the justification of fallen man takes place, as to the merit which procures it, irrespective of his well-doing. It is respective only of Christ, as to merit; it has to do only, as to personal reception, with the acceptance of the meriting Christ, that is to say with faith in Him. Then come, like a short "coda" following a full musical cadence, two brief questions and their answers, spoken almost as if again a Rabbinist were in discussion.