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"The law!" It is one of a group of words round which the thought of St. Paul constantly moves; and he uses it in more senses than one. Here he means by it generally the five Books of Moses to which the Jews commonly gave the name; and more particularly he means those parts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, in which are contained the various rules which God gave to Moses for the moral, social, political, and religious, or ceremonial conduct of the people of Israel. This was the law in which, as St. Paul said, the Jew of his day made his boast; he was proud to belong to the race which had received it. This was the law, the possession of which made Israel a "peculiar people," marking it off by a deep-cut line of separation from all the other nations of the world. This was the law which it was the business of every Israelite to obey. Now St. Paul says bluntly, that the main purpose of this law was not present, but prospective; it was not to be so much prized on its own account, as for the sake of that to which it was to lead. It was really like those slaves who were kept in well-to-do households in the ancient world, first to teach the children of their masters roughly, or as well as they could, and then to lead them down day by day to the school of some neighbouring philosopher, at whose hands they would receive real instruction. This, then, was the business of the law; it did the little it could do for the Jewish people as an elementary instructor, and then it had to take them by the hand and lead them to the school of Jesus Christ. This it did:

I. BY FORESHADOWING HIM. This was especially true of its ceremonies. All the Jewish ritual, in its minutest details, was a shadow of good things to come. Each ceremony was felt to have some meaning beyond the time then present, and so it fostered an expectant habit of mind; and as the ages passed, these expectations converged more and more towards a coming Messiah; and so, in a subordinate but real way, the ceremonial law did its part in leading the nation to the school of Christ.

II. BY CREATING IN MAN'S CONSCIENCE A SENSE OF WANT, WHICH CHRIST ALONE COULD RELIEVE. This was the work of the moral law. Exact obedience to strict precepts was commanded; but who could render it? So the law, universally disobeyed, became like a torch carried into the dark cellars and crevices of human nature that it might reveal the foul shapes lurking there, and might rouse man to long for a righteousness which it could not confer. And this could only be found in Christ.

III. BY PUTTING THEM UNDER A DISCIPLINE WHICH TRAINED THEM FOR CHRIST. God begins with rule, and ends with principle; begins with law, and ends with faith; begins with Moses and ends with Christ. In the earlier revelation God only said "Do this," "do not do that." In the later or Christian revelation He has done much more; He has said, "Join yourselves by an act of adhesion of your whole moral nature to the perfect moral Being" — in other words, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," This is justification by faith. So far from being moral anarchy, it is the absorption of rule into the higher realm of principle. In the experience of the soul, faith corresponds to the empire of principle in the growth of individual character and in the development of national life; while the law answers to that elementary stage in which outward rules are not yet absorbed into principle.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

WEB: So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.