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‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.’
Gal_3:13
I. One of the most momentous of these questions finds a solution there and not elsewhere. It is this: ‘How shall a man be just with God?’ The only satisfactory solution of these questions is to be found at the Cross.
II. God alone can give peace, light, cheer.—But sin has disturbed man’s relations with God, towards Whom he entertains aversion and enmity, for the ‘carnal mind is enmity against God.’ At times conscience upbraids the sinner; it brings him in guilty before that tribunal at which he must stand one day to give in his account. Something whispers within, ‘You are not what you ought to be, and what you might have become.’ He is constrained to make efforts to do better and to become better.
III. The religion of Christ differs from all other religions mainly in this, that it begins where they end, with the sinner’s reconciliation to God and the forgiveness of his sins, whereas they place these things at the goal, as the result of lifelong efforts and struggles. What shall God render unto me for all that I am doing to secure His favour in this life? This is the spirit of the devotee of all merely human systems. ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits that He hath done unto me?’ This is the cry of the Christian soul which has been redeemed from the curse of the law. Love must inevitably be its constraining motive.
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Rev. F. K. Aglionby.
Illustration‘A venerated clergyman of our Church who passed away towards the close of the last century used to tell of some words spoken to him in his early ministry by Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, whom he met at the house of a friend. Having been asked to conduct family worship, as the custom was, he expounded the passage of Scripture which he had read. Some time afterwards Mr. Simeon took him aside and said to him, “My young friend, you do not understand the uses of the law. They are three: (1) It convinces men of sin; (2) it leads them to Christ; and (3) it becomes their rule of life.” Thus we see that “the law of God is magnified and made honourable” when it fulfils these, its true functions, in their due order.’