to restore him to the Divine favour, endured the curse which we had merited, and obeyed the pre- cepts which we had violated : and thus rendered our salvation perfectly compatible with the honour of the Divine law ; inasmuch as what we have failed to do or suffer in our own persons, we have done and suf- fered in our Surety. But Christ had a further end in submitting to crucifixion, namely, to destroy sin, and, bv expiating its guilt, for ever to annul its power. This is frequently declared in Scripture, not only as the immediate end of his death d, but as the end of the whole dispensation which he has introduced6.
Now when St. Paul says, " I am crucified with Christ," we must understand, that there was something in his experience analogous to the crucifixion of Christ; or, in other words, that as Christ died a violent death, to cancel the obligations of the law as a covenant, and to destroy sin, so the Apostle, by a holy violence upon himself, died to the law as a covenant, and to sin as the most hateful of all evils.
The believer then, according to this view of the subject, is dead,
1. To the law—
[Once all his hopes were founded on his obedience to the moral law ; and he felt in his conscience a dread of God's wrath on account of his transgressions of its precepts. But now he abandons all his self-righteous hopes, and dismisses all his slavish fears, because he finds a better, yea, an assured, ground of hope in Christ's obedience unto death. He argues thus: ' Does the law curse me for my manifold transgressions ? Christ has endured its curse for me, and therefore I have no reason to fear itf: " there is no condemnation to me, if only I am in Christ Jesus s." On the other hand, does the law require perfect unsinning obedience in order to my justification before God? Christ has paid it that obedience, and " brought in thereby an everlasting righteousness11," " which is unto all, and upon all them that believe1." I renounce therefore all hope in my own obedience, and found all my hopes of
d Tit. ii. 14. 2 Cor. v. 15. e Rom. xiv. 9. Tit. ii. 12, 13.
f Gal. iii. 13. « Rom. viii. 1.
h Dan. ix. 24. » Rom. iii. 22.