Lessons.—1. It is hopeless to attain righteousness by law. 2. Faith in Christ is the only and universal way of obedience. 3. The law is disarmed by obeying it.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Vers. 10–12. The Inexorability of Law.
- The law renders no help in fulfilling its requirements but curses the incompetent (ver. 10).
- The law, though strictly observed, is powerless to justify (ver. 11).
- The law does not admit of faith; it offers life only to the doer (ver. 12).
Ver. 11. Man is justified by Faith alone.—One day wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate’s Staircase, the poor Saxon monk, Luther, was humbly creeping up those steps when he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, “The just shall live by faith!” He rises in amazement, he shudders at himself, he is ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him. He flies from the scene of his folly. It was in these words God then said, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. i. 3).—D’Aubigné.
Ver. 12. The Difference between the Law and the Gospel.
I. The law promises life to him who performs perfect obedience, and that for his works. The Gospel promises life to him who doeth nothing in the cause of his salvation, but only believes in Christ; and it promises salvation to him who believeth, yet not for his faith or for any works else, but for the merit of Christ. The law then requires doing to salvation, and the Gospel believing and nothing else.
II. The law does not teach true repentance, neither is it any cause of it, but only an occasion. The Gospel only prescribes repentance and the practice of it, yet only as it is a fruit of our faith and as it is the way to salvation.
III. The law requires faith in God, which is to put our affiance in him. The Gospel requires faith in Christ, the Mediator God-man; and this faith the law never knew.
IV. The promises of the Gospel are not made to the work, but to the worker; and to the worker not for his work, but for Christ’s sake, according to His work.