Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto
Christ
So the words should be read, as they are by the Syriac and
Ethiopic versions; for the words "to bring us" are a supplement
of our translators, and have nothing to answer to them in the
original; and the sense of the passage is, that the law performed
this office of a schoolmaster until the coming of Christ; which
shows that till that time the church was in its minority, that
the Jews were but children in knowledge and understanding, and
therefore stood in need, and were under the care of a
schoolmaster, the law, by which the whole Mosaic administration
is designed. They were taught by the moral law, the letter, the
writing on the two tables, with other statutes and judgments,
their duty to God and men, what is to be done and to be avoided,
what is righteousness and what is not, the nature of sin, its
demerit and consequences; but these gave them no instructions
about a Saviour, and life and righteousness by him. The
ceremonial law gave them some hints of the Gospel scheme, and the
way of salvation by Christ, but in a manner suited to their
estate of childhood; by sights and shows, by types and figures,
by rites and ceremonies, by shadows and sacrifices; it taught
them by divers washings the pollution of their nature, their need
of the blood of Christ to cleanse from all sin; by circumcision,
the necessity of regeneration, and the internal circumcision of
the heart; by the passover, the daily sacrifice and other
offerings, the doctrines of redemption, satisfaction, and
atonement; and by the brazen serpent, the necessity of looking to
Christ for life and salvation, and by various other things in
that branch of the legal economy: but besides the instruction the
law gave, it made use of discipline as a schoolmaster does; it
kept a strict eye and hand over them, and them close to the
performance of their duty; and restrained them from many things
their inclinations led them to, threatening them with death in
case of disobedience, and inflicting its penalties on
delinquents; hence they that were under its discipline, were
through fear of death it threatened them with, all their time
subject to bondage: even the ceremonial law had something awful
and tremendous in it; every beast that was slain in sacrifice was
not only an instruction to them that they deserved to die as that
creature did; but carried in it a tacit acknowledgment and
confession of their own guilt; and the whole was an handwriting
of ordinances against them. Moreover, the law being called a
schoolmaster, shows that the use of it was but temporary, and its
duration but for a time; children are not always to be under, nor
designed to be always under a schoolmaster, no longer than till
they are come to a proper age for greater business and higher
exercises of life; so the law was to continue, and did continue,
to be of this use and service to the Jewish church during its
minority, until Christ came, the substance of all it taught and
directed to: both the Jerusalem Targum and that of Jonathan ben
Uzziel, on ( Numbers
11:12 ) use the very Greek word the apostle does here,
concerning Moses, rendering the words, as a "pedagogue" or
"schoolmaster" bears a sucking child into the land
That we might be justified by faith;
by Christ the object of faith, by his righteousness, which faith
looks unto and receives, and not by the law and the works of it;
the people of the Jews were in such a state under the law, and
the law of that use unto them before the coming of Christ, as
above represented, that it might be made manifest, be a clear
point, and out of all dispute, that there is no such thing as
justification by the law; for how could ever such a blessing be
expected from it, when men were kept under it as under a military
guard; when they were shut up in it as in a prison, and were
treated by it as malefactors, convicted and condemned; and when
they were under the discipline of it, as a rigid and severe
schoolmaster? this being their case till Christ came, when it
ceased to be all this to them, he being the end of it for
righteousness, it became a thing self-evident, that justification
is only by him and his righteousness, and so the end here
mentioned was answered.