Expository Thoughts (continued)
Let us settle it in our minds that "the law is good if man uses it lawfully." (1 Tim. 1:8.) It is intended to show us God's holiness and our sinfulness—to convince us of sin and to lead us to Christ—to show us how to live after we have come to Christ, and to teach us what to follow and what to avoid. He that so uses the law will find it a true friend to his soul. The establishes Christian will always say, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man." (Rom. 7:22.)
Notes on 16:13-18
13. "Devoted to the one and despise the other." This probably means that the person will love one more than the other.
16. "The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John." This verse probably means something like this: "You make your boast about the law and the prophets, you Pharisees, and you do well to honor them. But you forget that the dispensation of the law and prophets was only intended to pave the way for the better dispensation of the kingdom of God, which was to be ushered in by John the Baptist. That dispensation has come. John the Baptist has appeared. The kingdom of God is among you. While you are ignorantly deriding me and my teaching, multitudes of tax collectors and sinners are making their way into the kingdom. Your boasting is not good. With all your professed zeal for the law and the prophets, you are utterly blind to that kingdom into which the law and the prophets were meant to guide you."
17. The chain of thought here is probably this: "Think not because I say that the law and the prophets have introduced a better dispensation, the kingdom of God, that I count the law and the