“To Redeem Them That Were under the Law.”

He does it in the most practical and real way. Whom does He redeem?—“Them that were under the law.” We can not refrain from referring for a moment to the idea that some have that this expression, “to redeem them that were under the law,” has a mere local application. They would have it that it means that Christ freed the Jews from the necessity of offering sacrifices, or from any further obligation to keep the commandments. Well, suppose we take it as referring only to the Jews, and especially to those who lived at the time of His first advent; what then?—Simply this, that we shut ourselves off from any place in the plan of redemption. If it was only the Jews that were under the law, then it was only the Jews that Christ came to redeem. Ah, we do not like to be left out, when it comes to the matter of redemption! Then we must acknowledge that we are, or were before we believed, “under the law;” for Christ came to redeem none but those who were under the law. “Under the law,” as we have already seen, means condemned by the law as transgressors. Christ did “not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” But the law condemns none but those who are amenable to it, and who ought to keep it. Therefore, since Christ redeems us from the law, from its condemnation, it follows that He redeems us to a life of obedience to it.GTI 169.1