Christ And The Law — When Christ says to him, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments, the man expects Him to add immediately, “my commandments.”
“Which ones?” he asks. He was quite deceived in his expectation. For Christ did not answer him as he expected but simply pointed him to the law.
This is not because the law is perfection, for “no one is justified by the law,” as it is written, but because the life lived according to the law is a kind of introduction to the eternal life, briefly acquainting trainees to the things above. “For the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ.”
Christ is the perfection. For the beginning of good is to act justly, He says. Just action then is shown by the law, but goodness is shown by Christ. The law taught us to repay those who wish to harm us in “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”
But Christ taught us to let go such balanced vengeance with a view to the greater good, teaching that “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well.”
Courtesy of Holy Myrrh-Bearers Church of Swarthmore.
“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. ” Galatians 3:24.
“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” Hebrews 10:1
The law given to show man that we could never do enough good works to be justified, and, there could never be enough sacrifices made to pay for sin. Man can’t live a sinless life – and the law proved that. There needed to be a better way for man to be justified in order to have a relationship with the living God and that better way is by grace, through faith, in the completed work of Jesus Christ.
“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Galatians 2:21
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9