Galatians 2:19

Galatians 2:19

I. St. Paul was dead to the law in two ways. First, he no longer sought in it the motive power which should enable him to bring forth fruit to God. It had itself cured him of this delusion. Henceforth he knew a more effectual motive, the love of Christ, that should constrain him to obedience, being in itself precept and power in one. And, secondly, he was loosed from the law, dead to it, in that he no longer sought to be accepted with God through, and on the ground of, his observance of it. For he had found, by a mournful experience, that it wrought not acceptance, but rejection, a terror of God, and not a confidence toward God; that by works of the law could no flesh be justified. While yet this dying to the law, as he goes on to say, was not a dying to all law. The law of the Spirit of life took the place of a dead, yet threatening, letter. He put one yoke off him, but in the act of this he put another on him. In fact, he only could get rid of one by assuming the other, even the yoke of Him whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light. He died to the law; but he died to it that he might live unto God.

II. For us also it stands true that we are not under the law, but under grace; and we also should be able to say with Paul, "I through the law am dead to the law." Christ's Gospel is not a law at all, but rather a new power communicated to humanity; a new hiding of the heavenly leaven in the lump of our nature; the casting of fire upon earth, the new fire of a heavenly love and of the Holy Ghost, who is love, which should enkindle the cold hearts of men and burn up in them the dross which the law indeed could make them aware of, but which it could never burn out from them. It was the coming in of new spiritual forces into the world. It demanded more from man, but it also gave more; in fact, it demanded nothing which it had not first given. The law, when regarded apart from Christ, is like that fabled Medusa's head which froze those that looked at it into stone. But Christ thaws those frozen hearts again, causes the pulses to play and the genial life-blood to flow in them once more.

R. C. Trench, Westminster and Other Sermons,p. 177.

References: Galatians 2:19. G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons to English Congregations in India,p. 145.Galatians 2:19; Galatians 2:20. W. B. Pope, Sermons,p. 292; S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 56.