ciliation to God is effected. The “abolishing,” there- fore, of which the apostle speaks, does not consist in setting the law aside, or suspending it by a sovereign, executive act. It is a causing it to cease; or rendering it no longer binding by satisfying its demands, so that we are judicially free from it; free not by the act of a sovereign but by the sentence of a judge; not by mere pardon, but by justification. Who is he that condemns, when God justifies? Rom. 8, 34. The law which Christ has thus abolished is called “the law of com- mandments in ordinances.” This may mean the law of commandments with ordinances—referring to the two classes of laws (ἐντολή and δόγμα), moral and positive ; or it may refer to the form in which the pre- cepts are presented in the law, as positive statutes, or commands, τῶν ἐντολῶν giving the contents of the law, and ἐν δόγμασι the form. The idea probably is that the law in all its compass, and in all its forms, so far as it was a covenant prescribing the conditions of salvation, is abolished. The law of which the apostle here speaks is not exclusively the Mosaic law. It is so described in various parallel passages, as holy, just and good, as taking cognizance of the inward feelings, as to make it evident it is the law of God in its widest sense. It is the law which binds the heathen and which is written on their hearts. It is the law from which the death of Christ redeems men. But redemption is not mere deliverance from Judaism, and therefore the law from which we are freed by the death of Christ is not merely the law of Moses. Deliverance
CHAP. I. vs. 14, 15. 135
from the Mosaic institutions could not have the ef- fects ascribed to the freedom from the law of which Paul speaks. It could not secure reconciliation to God, justification, and holiness, all of which, accord- ing to the apostle, flow from the redemption effected by Christ. The antithetical ideas always presented in Paul’s writings, on this subject, are the law and grace, the law and the gospel, the system which says: “Do and live,”—and the system which says: “Believe and live ;”—as, however, the form in which the law was ever present to the minds of the early Christians was that contained in the Mosaic institutions ; as all, who in that day were legalists, were Judaizers, and as the Mosaic economy was included in the law which Christ abolished, in many cases (as in the passage before us), special reference is had to the law in that particular form. But in teaching that men cannot be saved by obedience to the law of Moses, Paul taught that we cannot be saved by obedience to the law in any form. Or rather, by teaching that salvation is not of works of any kind, but of grace and through faith, he teaches it is not by the specific, ceremonial works enjoined in the law of Moses.
It is objected to the above interpretation of this pas- sage, which is the common one, that in order to justify connecting ἐν δόγμασι with ἐντολῶν (the law of com- mandments in ordinances), the article should be used. It is therefore urged that ἐν δόγμασι must be connected with καταργήσας and the passage read, “having abolished by doctrine the law of commandments.” To