The life and work of St. Paul

438 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAtTL.
manuductory." How startling would such arguments be to those who had, from
their earliest childhood, been taught to regard the Law as the one divine, inspired,
perfect, and eternal thing on earth ; the one thing which alone it was worth the
labour of long lives to study, and the labour of long generations to interpret and to
defend ! And how splendid the originality which could thus burst the bonds of
immemorial prejudice, and the courage which could thus face the wrath of outraged
conviction ! It was the enlightenment and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God ;
yes, but the Spirit works by the human instruments that are fitted to receive His
indwelling power ; and, in the admirable saying of the Chinese philosopher, "The
light of heaven cannot shine into an inverted bowl." To many a thoughtful and
candid Jew it must have come like a flash of new insight into the history of hia
nation, and of mankind, that he had elevated the Law to too exclusive a position ;
that the promise to Abraham was an event of far deeper significance than the legislation
of Sinai that the ;
Promise, not the Law, was the primary and original element
of Judaism; and that therefore to fall back from Christianity of Judaism was
to fall back from the spirit to the letter an unnatural reversion of what God had
ordained.
But he "
proceeds, Is there any opposition between the Law and the Promise f
Away with the thought ! In God's ceconomy of salvation both are united, and the
Law is a relative purpose of God which is taken up into His absolute purpose as a
means. 1 For had a Law been given such as could give life, righteousness would in
reality have been a result of law ; but the Scripture shut up all things under sin,
that the promise which springs from faith in Jesus Christ may be given to all who
believe. For before the faith came we were under watch and ward of Law, till the
faith which was to be revealed. So the Law became our tutor unto Christ, the stern
slave guiding us from boyish immaturity to perfect Christian manhood, 2 in order
that we may be justified as a result of faith. But when the faith came we are no
longer under a tutor. For by the faith ye are all sons of God in Jesus Christ.
For as many of you as were baptised into Christ, put on Christ. There is no room
for Jew or Greek, no room for slave or free, no room for male or female for ; ye are
3
all one man in Christ Jesus and if ; ye are of Christ then it seems ye are Abraham's
seed, heirs according to 4
promise.
"
Now, what I mean is, that so long as the heir is an infant he differs in no
but one of the parties to the covenant (Sia&jio)). It Is only under a different aspect that
Christ is a mediator (1 Tim. ii. 5). The passage has no reference to the eternal unity of
God, which is not at all in question, but to the fact that He stands by Himself as one
of the contracting parties. The "Law," then, has the same subordinate position as the
"Mediator" Moses. The Promise stands above it as a " covenant," in which God stands
alone-j-"is one " and in which no mediator is concerned. Such seems to be the clear
and simple meaning of this endlessly-disputed passage. (See Baur, Paul, ii. 198.)
Obviously, (1) the Promise had a wider and nobler scope than the Law ; (2) the Law was
provisional, the Promise permanent ; (3) the Law was given directly by angels, the
Promise directly by God ; but, while he leaves these three points of contrast to be
inferred, he adds the fourth and most important, that (4) the Promise was given, without
any mediating human agency, from God to man. On the sources of the
"
(perfectly
needless) "three hundred explanations of a passage by no means unintelligible, see
Keuss, Les Epitres, i. 109.
1
iii. 19, 20. Holsten, Inhalt des Briefs an die GaJater, p. 30.
2
iii. 24, iroiSaywyb? s xptoror. The waiSaycoyb? was often the most valueless of the
slaves. Perikles appointed the aged Zopyrus as the rac.Jayco-yb of Alkibiades. This fact
can, however, hardly have entered into St. Paul's meaning. The world, until Christ
came, was in its pupilage, and the Law was given to hold it under discipline, till a new
period of spiritual freedom dawned. The more inward relation between Law and sin,
and its power to bring sin more to our conscience, and so bring about the possibility of
its removal, are, as we shall see, worked out in the Epistle to the Romans.
3 Contrast this with the Jewish morning prayer, in which in three benediction! *
man blesses God who has not made him a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.
m. 2129,