The law of which the apostle is here speaking, is evidently not the Mosaic law merely. It is not the doctrine of this, and of similar pas- sages, that Christ has delivered us from the Jewish economy, and left us at liberty to embrace the simpler and more spiritual system of the gospel. The law of which he speaks is that which says, " The man which doeth these things shall live by them," ch. 10: 5. Gal. 3: 10; that is, which requires perfect obedience as the condition of acceptance. It is that which says, " Thou shalt not covet," v. 7 ; without which sin is dead, v. 8 ; which is holy, just, and good, v. 13 ; which is spiritual, V. 14, &c. &c. It is that law by whose works the Gentiles cannot be justified, ch. 3 : 20 ; from whose curse Christ has redeemed not the Jews only, but also the Gentiles, Gal. 3 : 13, 14. It is plain, therefore, that Paul here means by the law the will of God, as a rule of duty, no mat- ter how revealed. From this law, as prescribing the terms of our ac- ceptance with God, Christ has delivered us. Since, however, as re- marked above (ch. 6 : 14), the Old Testament economy, including th Mosaic institutions, was the form in which the law, as law, was ever present to the minds of the apostle and his readers, and since deliver- ance from the legal system, as such, involved deliverance from that economy, it is not wonderful that reference to that dispensation should often be made; or that Paul should at times express the idea of deliver- ance from the law, as such, by terms which would seem to express only deliverance from the particular form in which it was so familiar to his readers.
(5) For when we were in the fleshy the motions of sins, which were by the law, &c. The apostle having, in v. 4, stated that believers are freed from the law by the death of Christ, in this and the following verses he shows the necessity and the consequences of this change. ' We have been thus freed, because formerly, when under the law, we brought forth fruit unto death ; but now, being free from the law, we are devoted to the service of God.' The force of /or at the beginning of this verse, is therefore obvious. The former legal state of believers is here described by saying, they were in the jiesh. In the language of Scripture, the word fiesh ex- presses, in such connexions, one or the other of two ideas, or both con- jointly. First, a state of moral corruption, as in ch. 8 : 8, "Those that are in the flesh ;" secondly, a carnal state, i. e. a state in which men are subject to external rites, ceremonies, and commands ; or, more generally, a legal state, inasmuch as among the Jews, that state was one of subjec- tion to such external rites. Gal. 3:3," Having begun in the spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh ?" Compare Gal. 4 : 9, where the ex- pression " weak and beggarly elements" is substituted for the phrase " the flesh," see Rom. 4:1. In the present case, both ideas appear to be included. The meaning is, ' When in your unrenewed and legal state.' The opposite condition is described (v. 6) as a state of freedom from the law ; which, of course, shows that the second of the two ideas mentioned