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As if this were not enough, note the answers of the Scriptures to the question,
"Wherefore then serveth the law?" (Gal. 3: 19).
(1)
"It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to Whom the promise was
made" (Gal. 3: 19).
(2)
"If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have
been by the law" (Gal. 3: 21; 2: 21).
(3)
The return of a believer to the law is described as going back to "weak and beggarly elements"
(Gal. 4: 9).
(4)
"As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse" (Gal. 3: 10).
(5)
"The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3: 24).
(6)
"The law which was 430 years after (the promise to Abraham), cannot disannul, that it should
make the promise of none effect" (Gal. 3: 17).
(7)
The Old Covenant is described as "the letter that killeth", "the ministration of death" and "the
ministration of condemnation". It was destined to be "abolished" (II Cor. 3:).
(8)
The law "worketh wrath" (Rom. 4: 15); and entered that sin "might abound" (Rom. 5: 20).
(9)
The Apostle, writing as a faithful Christian man, declared that before his conversion as
"touching the righteousness of the law" he was "blameless". This condition he called
"mine own righteousness which is of the law", yet so poor and futile was it (albeit no reader
of these lines has ever reached it) that, when compared with the righteousness which is
through the faith of Christ, he was constrained to fling aside his own righteousness as so
much "refuse" (Phil. 3: 6-9).
(10)
To this law--it claims, its righteousness, its rewards, its works, its promises and its penalties--
Paul "died", that in and with Christ he might "live" unto God (Gal. 2: 19).
(11)
Though the law itself was "holy", "just", "good" and "spiritual", man was carnal and the law
was "weak through the flesh" (Rom. 7: 12-14; 8: 3).
Unconditionally and of set purpose, the Apostle sets the law aside as having no place
in the plan of the gospel of grace. When this fact is established beyond the possibility of
doubt, he returns to the primeval law of love:
"For all the law is fulfilled in one word; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"
(Gal. 5: 14).
"Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law"
(Rom. 13: 10).
The law of Moses therefore was a covenant destined to fail because of the inability of
Israel to fulfil the terms, and so it becomes a demonstration for all time that `by the deeds
of the law shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God'.
The Apostle's earliest recorded Gospel address contains these words:
"Through this Man is preached unto you, the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that
believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of
Moses" (Acts 13: 38, 39).
In view of the consistent testimony of Scripture to the character of that righteousness
which is of the law, but to which Paul, as a Pharisee had attained (Phil. 3: 6), any system
of teaching that maintains that the obedience of Christ to the law of Moses constitutes the
righteousness in which the believer stands accepted, must be repudiated. We stand in `a
righteousness of God', a righteousness so far above that attainable under the law, that we