The Law served the Jews as a trainer, as a guardian, and as a guide to lead them to the Christ.
But now also to the gentiles, that is all other nations beside the Jews, the law turned out to be like a schoolmaster, who teaches us, shows us our sinful nature, and shows us how much we need the Christ as our Savior. And then leads us to the Christ by Whom we can be justified.
We all need Jesus very much, so that by His sacrifice we might be justified by faith.
That is, that we in, and through, the Christ can be declared righteous, meaning that God sees us in Christ as righteous, as being in a right standing with Him.
Galatians 3:24 (KJV)
The law was our schoolmaster
to bring us unto Christ,
that we might be justified by faith.
The word schoolmaster or “tutor,” literally reads “pedagogue”: this term, among the Greeks, meant a faithful servant entrusted with the care of the boy from childhood to puberty, to keep him from evil, physical and moral, and accompany him to his amusements and studies. Children, (literally, infants) need such tutoring (Galatians 4:3).
So the law was put in charge to lead us to the Christ, with Whom we are no longer “shut up” in bondage, but are freemen, and as such, we in Him may be justified by faith. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to the Christ, that we may be justified by faith.
God could not see us as righteous, because we are not. He could only see us this way since the Christ, the object of faith, had come, took our punishment, died in our place, and set us free. Only in Him, God can see us as righteous.
Therefore we are hopelessly lost for all eternity without Him, and therefore it is uttermost important to go through the narrow gate and follow Jesus on the narrow way to His Kingdom.
- The moral law shows us what we ought to do, and we learn that we are our inability to do it.
- In the ceremonial law we seek, by animal sacrifices, to answer for our not having done it, but find that dead victims are no satisfaction for the sins of living men, and that outward purifying will not cleanse the inward soul. Therefore we need an infinitely better Sacrifice, the antitype of all the legal sacrifices.
- Thus delivered up to the judicial law, we see how awful the doom is, that we deserve.
- The law, in the end leads us to the Christ, with whom we find righteousness and peace.
“Sin!, sin! is the word heard for ages, again and again, in the Old Testament.
But since Jesus took our punishment, there is an other word ringing in our ears. Now we too hear the word “Grace”.
How stupid a person can be, not to gladly accept the Grace that God is offering us through His Son Jesus Christ.
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