comes to know tho lifo of God (Eph. ii. 1-5; Rom. vi. 7-11); he is 1·econci1ed, and a now existence of peace nncl purity is born wilhin him (2 Cor. v. 17-21), to culminate in his final presentation perfect in O/irist (eh. i. 21, 22, 28). (3) Of this passing from death to life, not circumcision, but baptism, i.~ the appointed and proper Cfhristian symbol. Therein tbo believer is "buried with Chri~t" in his ~rave (ver. 12; Rom. vi.3, 5); his old self, his former condemned existence, is put off and washed away for ever. He emerges from the cleansing stream, "a now creature in Christ Jesus." .A.11 this baptism sets forth and sets forward, so far as the picturing and outward acting of the matter may. And being the authoritative public sign of the grace of a new life, it seals that life on the consciousness and memory of the believing and understanding recipient, and biuds its obligations upon him before God and man; so that henceforth he can only "reckon himself to be dead unto sin, but living unto God in ChriHt Jesus" ( Rom. vi. 11). III. TnE DAR REMOVED: THE VEIL LIFTED. (Vers. 14, 15.) What the individual Christian now realizes for himself in Christ-his new life in God and the cleansing and sanctifying of his nature-is but the personal appropriation of that which was reve:iled to the whole world and addresses itself to the wants of human nature everywhere. It meets the conditions brought about by God's previous dealings with mankind (eh. i. 23, 26-28; Rom. i. 2-5; xvi. 25-27; Acts xiv. 15-17; xvii. 26-31; Heh. i. 1, 2). In two respects the apostle signalizes the earlier relations of men to God as imperfect: two hindrances there were lo that "access to the Father" now secured ( l<:ph. ii. 18; Rom. v. 2; Hcb. vii. 19; x.19-22)-hindrances congruou.~ in nature and c1Tect, felt in the quick and instructed religious consciousness of Judaism more keenly than elsewhere- that are "t.aken out of the way" in Christ. There was the law with its condemning voice for the conscience, and the angelic mediation with its terrors and its mysteries for the heart and understanding. The first guilty pair" hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden" (Gen. iii. 8); and a sinful, weak-hearted people, chosen to be brought near unto him, said, "Let not God speak with us lest we die" (Exod. xx. 19). And God in mercy and in justice heard their prayer. He veiled himself behind his laws and his providence, behind the forms of nature, and the oracles of prophecy, and the progress of history, and the flashing forth of liis glory in the angels of his presence, until Law, the ..-cuaa,-oryos, "ordained through angels," shonld have done its work, "and the fulnass o(the times should be come" (Gal. iii. 19-24; Rom. v. 20). 1. Till then it was increasingly felt that the law with its decrees was aqainst "8. It" wrought wrath" (Rom. iv. 15). It brought us" under a curse" (Gal. iii. 10). It stirred up and brought to its crisis in an agony of self-despair the conflict between the better nature and tbe worse in man (Rom. vii. 7-25). It invoked death with its anticipatory terrors as the sral to its authority and the witness to our guilt (Rom. v. 12-14, 21; vii. 24; 1 Cor. xv. 56). The list of its commandments is but a catalogue of our offences, a tale of debts, not one of which we are prepared to meet, and yet which must be discharged "to the uttermost farthing." In Christ's cross, God has, at a stroke, wiped out the whole bill of oitr o.{frnces. lle has removed it from between us and himself, and nailed it, with CbrisL's body, to the cross, where he bids us read, "'!'hero is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jestis" (Rom. viii. 1; iii. 26). This the apostle had taught already, and it is the glory of his earlier Epistles, addressed to Churches infested with Pharisaic Judaism and its teaching of salvation by works of law, to havo established this truth in the understandin~ and the faith of the Church for e.11 time. 2. But the philosophic Judaism with which he has now to deal requires him to insist more strongly on the immediate revelation of God himself to the world that is made in Christ. Now that One be.s been "manifested at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heh. ix. 26; Isa. !ix. 2), it is po3sible to behold God by e. nearer vision. With the revelation of his pardoning mercy and sin-avenging justice in Christ, "the Son of his love" (Eph. ii. 4:; Rom. iii. 26), he makes known his inmost name and nature. 'l'o Israel, in comparison with ot_her nations," God was nigh" (Deut. iv. 7; Lev. xx. 26); and yet even Israe! complams, "Verily thou art e. Guel tbe.t hidest thyself'' (Isa. xiv. 15). He" came with ten thou- sand of his holy ones, and from bis right band went e. fiery law for them" (Deut. xxxiii. 2); and "the earth shook, the heavens also dropped e.t the presence of God" (Ps. Ixviii. 8). "He made the clouds his chariot;" his" way was in the se,,, and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps were not known" (Ps. lxxvii. 19, 20). 'l'he mystic 104 THE EPISTLE TO TUE COLOSSIANS. [ell, II, 1-23,
veil that screened his presence was ~s splendid as the law by which he ruled the con- sciences ~f men was stern and tern~le. Dut in Christ, he "laid his glory by.'' God appeared rn the Dabe of Dethlebcm, lD the Man of sorrows, in Chri 8 t crucified, ae tl,o Father of the children of men. He bids all his angels worship and wait upon tho lowly form of the Son of man, and the elements of nature (more closely linked with the angelic powers, perhaps, than we can imagine) are mado to do his bidding "that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (John v. 23). "'l'b;y shall call his name Immanuel, God with us" (Matt. i. 23). None had "seen God at nny time;" the angels that had been his ministers, the glories of tho created world iu which he robed himself (Ps. cii. 2G; civ. 2), these could not utter his Namo: "the only- begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, the Word made flesh, he declared him" (Jolm i. 14, 18). "The veil is done away in Christ." llut" the same veil," which in St. Paul's day bung between the Jewish ruiud and the true knowledge of God "remaineth unlifted" for those who will not behold "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Uor. iii. 14; iv. 3-6). God at ouce "reconciled the world unto him- self" and unveiled himself to the world in him. 'l'his is the sum of these two verses.