If he knows not the difference between the law and the gospel, he will be apt, especially in the affair of justification, to confound the one with the other. The consequence will be that in his painful experience, bondage will be mixed with liberty of spirit, fear with hope, sorrow with joy, and death with life. If he cannot so distinguish the gospel from the law as to expect all his salvation from the grace of the gospel and nothing of it from the works of the law, he will easily be induced to connect his own works with the righteousness of Jesus Christ in the affair of his justification.
This was the great error of the Judaizing teachers in the churches of Galatia. They mingled the law with the gospel in the business of justification, and thereby they so corrupted the gospel as to alter the very nature of it and make it another gospel. They taught that except men were circumcised and kept the law of Moses, they could not be justified or saved (Acts 15:1-5). They informed the people that while the righteousness of Christ received by faith was necessary, their own works of obedience were also requisite in connection with it to entitle them to justification before God. This is a fundamental error and such a one that, if even an angel from heaven would publish it, he should be accursed. Accordingly, the apostle boldly affirmed to the Galatians, and he deliberately and earnestly repeated his declaration that though he himself or even an angel from heaven were to preach any other gospel to them than that which he had preached unto them, he should be accursed (Gal. 1:8-9). To mingle, then, the law with the gospel or to teach men to join the works of the law to the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ as the ground of a sinner’s title to justification in the sight of God is, according to our apostle, to preach “another gospel” (Gal. 1:6).
As this is a great error, so it is a very dangerous error. If a man attempts to add any works of his own to the consummate righteousness of Jesus Christ as the ground of his justification before God, Christ profits him nothing. The obedience and death of Christ have “become of no effect” to him. “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:2-4). If a man tries to connect his own performances with the righteousness of Jesus Christ for the pardon of his sins and the acceptance of his person as righteous in the sight of God, he deprives himself of all benefit from that perfect righteousness. If he relies on his own works of obedience for even the smallest part of his title to eternal life, “he is a debtor to do the whole law” in its covenant form, and he fixes himself under the dreadful curse of it. Christ will profit him nothing unless he relies on His infinitely glorious righteousness only for all his title to justification and eternal life. A sinner depends on the righteousness of Christ for justification to no good purpose if he does not rely on it only, and neither in whole nor in part on his own obedience.
John Colquhoun | A Treatise on the Law and Gospel (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books), 127–28. (HT: Nate Price)
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