The first part of the epistle to the Galatians is occupied with the independence of Paul's ministry. It was neither of nor by man. From the apostles he received nothing. The revelations he received and his apostolic authority were immediately from the Lord. But on this part it is not my object now to dwell. At the end of chap. 2 the apostle gives, in earnest and burning words, the whole bearing of the law on the gospel, and how they were related one to another; but of this at the close. I will now show how he sets the law and the gospel over against one another.

Up to the flood, save by the testimony of godly men and prophets, God did not interfere, though the history of man's perverseness was complete in Adam and Cain. That issued in the judgment of the flood. After that, God began anew to deal with man, to unfold His ways to him in the state in which he was. And they were carried on till the full proof of man's irreclaimable state was given in the rejection of Christ. The first of these dealings, after scattering men into nations and tongues and languages, was His taking Abraham out of them all for Himself, and making him the stock and root of a new family on the earth, both the fleshly and the spiritual:the former, Israel; the latter, the one seed, Christ. Leaving aside for the moment Israel, the seed according to the flesh (to whom the promises will surely be accomplished in grace) we find the promise made to Abram in Gen. 12, and confirmed to the seed in chap. 22. This referred to all nations who were to be blessed in the Seed, the one Seed-typified by Isaac, offered up and raised in figure. On this the apostle insists. The blessing came by promise. This, confirmed as it was to Isaac, could not be disannulled, and (what is more directly to the point) could not be added to. The law could not be annexed to it as a condition. To that there were two parties; but God was only one. The accomplishment of this conditional promise depended on the fidelity of both, and hence had no stability. God's promise depended on Himself alone. His faithfulness was its security, and it could not fail. But the law, coming four hundred and thirty years after, could not invalidate or be added to the confirmed promise. The law is not against the promises of God, but merely came in by the by till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; it produced transgression-not righteousness. The law was not of faith; its blessing was for those who, being under it, practiced it-which they did not.

Promise and faith in" the promised One went together. The law brought a curse; Christ, the promised Seed, was made a curse for those under it, and when Christianity or faith came, they were no longer under it at all. The law was an intermediate, added thing, whose place ceased when the promised Seed came. The law is contrasted with grace, with the promise, with faith, and with the Seed, first for justification. A man under the law was a debtor himself to do the whole of it; and a Christian taking this ground was fallen from grace:Christ had become of none effect to him. A man who looked to the law frustrated the grace of God :if righteousness came by it, Christ was dead in vain.

But the contrast is applied to godly walk. The Spirit is opposed to the flesh. They are contrary one to the other in their nature. We are to walk after the Spirit, having the things of the Spirit before us, to do its works, to produce its fruits; but if we are led of the Spirit we are not under law. Life and power and a heavenly object characterize the Spirit, in contrast with the law which deals with flesh (and in vain) instead of taking us out of it. Thus, as to godly walk as well as for righteousness, the law is contrasted with grace. On one side are grace, promise, faith, Christ, and the Spirit, and, I may add, a righteous standing before God; on the other, the law claiming obedience from the flesh, which does not render it, and out of which the law cannot deliver us. It gives no life. If there had been a law which could have given life, then, indeed, righteousness should have been by the law. It is this full contrast which makes the Galatians so striking.

The result is this. Being led of the Spirit we are not under law. What then is our state ? We through the Spirit wait for the hope that belongs to it, that is, glory. How so ? Being righteous in Christ, we have received the Spirit, and in the power of that we wait for what it so richly reveals. The contrast of the flesh and Spirit, and the power of the latter, leaves the law functionless as to walk, whether in power or character. Law was a rule for flesh, a perfect one, but not for Spirit. The Spirit reveals heavenly things, Christ in glory, and changes us into His image. This was in no way the law's object.

How, then, is its real use and power stated in the epistle ? Peter, when certain came from James, would no longer eat with the Gentiles. Paul withstood him to the face-the weakness of one yielding to the presence of Jews; the energetic faith of the other holding fast the truth of the gospel. Peter had left the law as the way of obtaining righteousness, and he was going back to it, building again what he had destroyed; he was then a transgressor in destroying it. Christ had set him free from the law -was Christ, then, minister of sin? What was the effect of the law? Ah! we have, through grace, in the earnestness of a holy conscience, its true work- it wrought death. The law had killed Paul (that is, in his conscience before God). He had been alive without it once. But thereby he was dead to it, now; and this, that in another way, in another life, he might live to God, which the flesh could not do. Had the law been given effect to in himself, it had been curse and condemnation as well as death; but it was Christ who had died under its curse for him, and he was crucified with Christ – being thus dead, dead to law and to sin at the same time, having done with the old Adam, to which the law ap-lied; he was, nevertheless, now alive. Yet not he (which would have been the flesh) but Christ lived in him.

The law, and condemnation, and the flesh, were (so to speak) gone together as to Paul's position before God, and replaced by Christ and the Spirit, on which last he largely insists in what follows-chap. 3. But there is more; there is the object before the soul."The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,* who loved me and gave Himself for me. *"The faith of the Son of God" is the character of that faith which makes Him (with all the blessed results of His work) the object of its confiding trust, Ed.* "This is the great point. That divine person, who has so loved us and given Himself for us (whom we thus know in perfect grace, in love even unto death)is the sanctifying object of the whole life. We live by Him. The law gave no object, any more than it gave life and strength. But grace, filling the heart with love to the blessed One, leads out the heart in confidence in an Object that conforms it to itself. The principle of dealing-grace, life, power, object, are all contrasted with law, which afforded none of these, and could therefore no more produce godliness than it could righteousness before God.

The epistle thus contrasts grace, promise, faith, Christ, the Spirit for righteousness and walk alike, with law and flesh. The law was useful as bringing death on us, that is, on the old man; condemnation being borne by Christ, in whom we have died (o law and to sin. A new place, and life, and righteousness, beyond the cross, is that into which we have entered, with Christ in heaven before us. J. N. D.