58 II. CORINTHIANS 3, 6.

sin there is no concle]nn.'itioii, and wliere tliere is sin there is death. This is all that tliose who reject the gospel have to fall back upon. It is this principle which is rendered so prominent in the Mosaic economy as to give it its character of law. Viewed under this aspect it is the ministration of condemnation and death. 2. The Mosaic economy was also a national covenant ; that is, it presented national promises on the condition of national obedience. Under this aspect also it was purely legal. But 3, as the gospel contains a renewed revelation of the law, so the law of Moses contained a revela- tion of the gospel. It presented in its priesthood and sacri- fices, as types of the office and work of Christ, tlie gratuitous method of salvation through a Redeemer. This necessarily supposes that faith and not works was the condition of salva- tion. It was those who trusted, not those free from sin, who were saved. Thus Moses wrote of Christ, John 5, 46 ; and thus the law and the prophets witnessed of a righteousness of faith, Rom. 3, 21. When therefore the apostle spoke of the old covenant under its legal aspect, and especially when speak- ing to those who rejected the gospel and clung to the law of Moses as law, then he says, it kills, or is the ministration of condemnation. But when viewing it, and especially when speaking of those who viewed it as setting forth the great doctrine of redemption through the blood of Christ, he repre- sented it as teaching his own doctrine. The law, in every form, moral or Mosaic, natural or revealed, kills. In demand- ing works as the condition of salvation, it must condemn all sinners. But the gospel, whether as revealed in the promise to Adam after his fall, or in the promise to Abraham, or in the writings of Moses, or in its full clearness in the New Tes- tament, gives life. As the old covenant revealed both the law and the gospel, it either killed or gave life, according to the light in Av^iich it was vicAved. And therefore Paul sometimes says it does the one, and sometimes the other. But the spirit givcth life. The spirit, or the gospel, gives life in a sense cor- relative to that in which the letter (i. e. the law) kills. 1. By revealing a righteousness adequate to our justification, and thus delivering us from the sentence of death. 2. By pro- ducing the assurance of God's love and the hope of his glory in the jjlace of a dread of his wrath. 3. By beconnng, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, an inward principle or power transforming us into the image of God; instead of a mere out- ward command.