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SERMON XX.

OUR REDEMPTION BY CHRIST.

GALATIANS, II, 19, 20.

"For I through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

ST. PAUL having, in this chapter, related to the Galatians the circumstance respecting his reproving Peter, for separating himself from the gentiles, gives them a short account of what he said upon that occasion, on the true doctrine of the gospel, concerning the justification of sinners. What the Apostle, in the words before us, declared to be true of himself, is equally true of all Christians; as we shall readily perceive by considering the doctrine which they were designed to explain.

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We all know that, according to the conditions of the first covenant between God and man, death was to be the penalty of transgression, immortal life in Heaven the due and merited reward of obedience. The condition was a simple one, easy to

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be observed, and, because it was so easy, the punishment attached to the violation of it was justly severe. That law which could not refuse the reward of obedience, could neither withhold the punishment of disobedience; for "God is not a man, that he should lie;" and, therefore, the terms of the first covenant, proposed and ratified by Omniscience, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," became as immutable as the Being who framed them. As all the posterity of Adam is involved in the sad consequences of his infraction of the covenant entered into between God and him in Paradise-because, being derived from his body, of which we have been begotten, we are necessarily partakers of his corruption-by his breaking the law, we have all died, that is, we have all become liable to death, by its curse. Our obedience can never now be perfect, because it can never do away with the guilt of a breach of covenant already incurred. Future obedience, however perfect, could never obliterate past transgression; so that, now, if we live under an imperfect state of obedience, we must live by the free gift of God, and not by law, which demands perfect obedience; and this, in our present fallen state, is impossible. Thus, then, it is, that we, "through the law, are dead to the law, that we might live unto God."

The construction of this passage of the text is somewhat obscure. St. Paul, as I apprehend him, means to say, that, through breaking the law, we

have died by law, that is, we have incurred the legal penalty, which is death; so that now we can only live by the grace of God. We have seen that, under the first covenant, the disobedience of man challenged the penalty denounced against an infraction of it; and when this first law was violated

-by the first law I shall of course be understood to mean the law of God given in Paradise, in contradistinction to that law which was promulgated to the Israelites from Mount Sinai-when this first law was violated, the curse, which was death, followed its violation; so that man was thenceforward devoted to death, from which he had no means of escaping, as he could not restore himself to perfect innocence, having once been guilty. The reward of innocence could not be bestowed upon him, when he was no longer innocent; and there was no alternative, but that he should undergo the punishment of guilt, or that God should reverse his decrees, and thus sully his perfections with inconsistency and falsehood. This was utterly incompatible with the Divine Nature. There could, then, be no other possible alternative but that man should die, since the penalty of sin had been irreversibly assigned, and was to be literally paid. God, however, in his mercy, provided the remedy in his Son, who became man, eventually paid the forfeit of his life for us all, becoming our substitute unto death, and counteracted by this memorable sacrifice those terrible issues which the single transgression of

Adam had provoked. He has restored life to those who were "dead in trespasses and sins." He has restored to us by grace what we had forfeited by transgression; and thus, "as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." By him, "we have been redeemed from the curse of the law," he having become "a curse for us." He has rescued us from death eternal, and purchased for us the means of salvation; so that it now rests with ourselves either to receive the "wages of sin," which is death,—that is, eternal death,—or to obtain "the gift of God," which is "eternal life."

Since the atonement made by Christ for the sins of the whole world has been accepted by infinite mercy as an equivalent for the penalties which man had incurred by a breach of covenant with his Maker, we may be all said to have died in Christ, inasmuch as he took upon himself the sins of the whole human race, and expiated them upon the cross, enduring in his own person the curse of the law, and thereby absolving us from the penalty. As the blessed Jesus has, as our representative, died, it has been shown, that we may be truly said to have died in him; and as he suffered by crucifixion, the words of the text most properly represent us as "crucified with him." It is to be observed, in order further to elucidate these words of the Apostle, that "believers being considered as members

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