Galatians 2:19 For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live to God. Suppose a man anxious to pass from one country to another, from a dangerous and wretched country to a safe and happy one. Directly in his road stands a mountain which, it would appear, he must pass over, and which he at first imagines he can without much difficulty climb. He tries, but scarcely has he begun to breast it, when a precipice stops him. He descends and tries again in another direction. There another precipice or some other obstacle arrests his course; and still ever as he begins his ascent, he is baffled, and the little way he contrives to mount serves only to show him more and more of the prodigious height of the mountain, and its stern, rugged, impassable character. At last, wearied and worn, heart-sick with labour and disappointment, and thoroughly convinced that no efforts of his can carry him over, he lies down at the mountain's foot in utter despair; longing still to be on the other side, but making not another movement to get there. Now ask him as he lies exhausted on the ground, what has occasioned his torpor and despair, he will say, that mountain itself; its situation between him and the land of his desires, and its inaccessible heights and magnitude. So stands the law of God between the Christian and the land he longs for. At first he thought he could obey it, so obey it as to find his way to God by it, and he made the effort, made perhaps many and long-continued efforts, but the result of them all has been disappointment and despair. The law itself has stripped him of all hope of getting to heaven by means of it. He is exactly in the situation of that traveller by the mountain's side, whom you can no longer prevail on to move. "Of what use is it?" he says. "I will try no more. I know the difficulty of the work, and I know my own weakness too well." Here lies the difficulty, or rather the impossibility to such creatures as we are, of making our way to God by means of the law, here in these two things — the extent of that Jaw's requirements, and the unbending, inexorable character of its denunciations. (C. Bradley.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.WEB: For I, through the law, died to the law, that I might live to God. |
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