I. Man is justified by the mere mercy of God.—And there is excluded by justification all merit of congruity, all meritorious works of preparation wrought by us, all co-operation of man’s will with God’s grace in the effecting of our justification.
II. Man is justified by the mere merit of Christ.—That is, by the meritorious obedience which He wrought in Himself, and not by anything wrought by Him in us.
III. A sinner is justified by mere faith.—That is, nothing within us concurs as a cause of our justification but faith, and nothing apprehends Christ’s obedience for our justification but faith. This will more easily appear if we compare faith, hope, and love. Faith is like a hand that opens itself to receive a gift, and so is neither love nor hope. Love is also a hand, but yet a hand that gives out, communicates, and distributes. For as faith receives Christ into our hearts, so love opens the heart and pours our praise and thanks to God and all manner of goodness to men. Hope is no hand, but an eye that wistfully looks and waits for the good things faith believes. Therefore, it is the only property of faith to clasp and lay hold of Christ and His benefits.
IV. The practice of them that are justified is to believe.—To put their trust in Christ. 1. Faith and practice must reign in the heart and have all at command. We must not go by sense, feeling, reason, but shut our eyes and let faith keep our hearts close to the promise of God. Faith must overrule and command nature and the strongest affections thereof. 2. When we know not what to do by reason of the greatness of our distress, we must fix our hearts on Christ with separation, as he that climbs up a ladder or some steep place: the higher he goes the faster he holds.—Perkins.
Vers. 17, 18. False Methods of Salvation—
- To seek justification in any other way than through Christ.—“If, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners” (ver. 17).
- Reflect unjustly on the character of the only Saviour.—“Is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid” (ver. 17).
- Aggravate our sin by restoring in practice what we have abandoned in theory.—“For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor” (ver. 18).
Ver. 19. The Christian Dead to the Law.
I. The state in which the apostle describes himself to be.—“I am dead to the law.” Not the moral law of God. Every rational creature in the universe is under its dominion, the believer as well as others. He must escape from existence before he can escape from the law of God. The apostle means he is dead to it as a covenant between God and himself. There still stands the law before him in all its primitive authority, purity, and majesty; he honours it and strives to obey it, and often rejoices in the thought that the time will come when he shall have his soul in a state of perfect conformity to it, but this is all. Its life-giving, death-bringing powers are utterly at an end, and he knows they are at an end. He is dead to all hope from the law, dead to all expectation of heaven or of salvation from it. He builds no more hope on his obedience to it than as though the law had ceased to exist, and no more fear has he of condemnation from it. The believer, dead to the legal covenant, rests from it. The connection between him and it is over, and with it are over the feelings within him, the painful, perturbing, apprehensive, slavish feelings arising out of it.
II. The means whereby the apostle has been brought into the state he describes.—“I through the law am dead to the law.” Suppose a man anxious to pass from one country to another, from a dangerous and wretched country to a safe and happy one. Directly in his road stands a mountain which he cannot pass over, and which he at first imagines he can without much difficulty climb. He tries, but scarcely has he begun to breast it when a precipice stops him. He descends and tries again in another direction. There another precipice or some other obstacle arrests his course; and still ever as he begins his ascent he is baffled, and the little way he contrives to mount serves only to show him more and more of the prodigious height of the mountain, and its stern, rugged, impassable character. At last, wearied and worn, heart-sick with labour and disappointment, and thoroughly convinced that no efforts of his can carry him over, he lies down at the mountain’s foot in utter despair, longing still to be on the other side, but making not another movement to get there. Now ask him as he lies exhausted on the ground what has occasioned his torpor and despair; he will say that mountain itself: its situation between him and the land of his desires, and its inaccessible heights and magnitude. So stands the law of God between the Christian and the land he longs for. The impossibility of making our way to God by means of the law arises from the extent of its requirements, and the unbending, inexorable character of its denunciations. We can do nothing but die to it, sink down before this broad, high, terrific mountain in utter despair. While through the law the believer dies to all hope from the law, through the cross of Christ he also dies to all apprehension from it.
III. The design of this deadness to the law in the Christian’s soul.—“That I might live unto God.” This living unto God dethrones self, discovers to the man the base, degrading idol to which he has been bowing down, makes him ashamed of the worship he has paid it, and places on the throne of his heart his Saviour and his God. His renunciation of his self-righteousness has gradually brought on other renunciations of self. The law driving him to Christ has been the means of driving him out of self altogether. It has brought him into the sphere of the Gospel and among those soul-stirring principles, feelings, and aspirations connected with the Gospel. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the Gospel has destroyed the law or loosened in any degree its hold on men. The Gospel rests on the law. But for the law and its unbending, unchangeable, external character the Gospel had not existed, for it would not have been needed. Dead to the law and alive unto God are two things that go together; the one springs out of the other. The more completely we die to the law as a covenant, the more fully, freely, and happily shall we live unto God.—C. Bradley.