I. The law teaches faith; that is, that we believe in God. But the gospel directs us to proceed 'from faith to faith,' viz. from faith in God to faith in Christ: for true and saving faith is not a mere naked recumbency immediately upon God, which faith the Jews were wont to profess, but faith in God by the mediation of faith in Christ.
II. In the law the righteousness of God was revealed condemning, but in the gospel it was revealed justifying the sinner. And this is the great mystery of the gospel, that sinners are justified not only through the grace and mere compassion and mercy of God, but through divine justice and righteousness too, that is, through the righteousness of Christ, who is Jehovah, "the Lord our Righteousness."
MAHX note:
Lightfoot's statements are true but partial therefore misleading. This is the nature of replacement theology. In order to correct this, we need to understand: The Torah is not just condemning —otherwise the people who received the Torah would have had no hope. Lightfoot's reading of the Torah, like so much traditional Christian reading of the Torah, is a partial reading of Paul taken as the whole. Based on statements from Paul, like, "The Torah was the administration of condemnation," they paint a picture that when God gave Israel the Torah he simply condemned them as being sinners. Again, if this is all the Torah did Moses and all those who truly heard it would have had no hope. But they did have hope, not just in establishing their own righteousness. The natural mind did get in the way, but as well as a conviction of sin from the Torah they also had a hope of righteousness through the Torah, righteousness from God and in God.
Their Torah based belief in God was not simply just natural. Among the fathers and mothers and many individuals in Israel, it was supernatural in looking for the resurrection and the World To Come right from the beginning. The Exodus immediately made it a supernatural faith for the nation as a corporate entity.
Yes there was and is reactionary and regressive thinking from the natural mind the talks about Abraham being the first monotheist and the first commandment as being a commandment not to. E an atheist and the second not to be a polytheist, etc. The truth is that the Exodus is the setting of the giving of the Torah and that it is given within the covenant made with Abraham and the fathers. Within the covenant of promise the Torah is an element of hope and the source of faith itself.
When Paul says, "What the Torah could not do..." he does not because it was weak because it was only condemning. But this is essentially what Lightfoot says. Paul says it was weak through the flesh. According to Paul, the Torah is not only strong, it is perfect. R7. But it was given on the basis of a covenant promise. Therefore it was given as promise to a chosen branch of the family tree of the natural Adam. Because it was still promise it's power to be realized could be realized only through the natural Adam. Paul calls this "the flesh" and says it was through this that the Torah was weak. Because it was weak while in the form of promise it could not do what needed to be done. For this reason God sent his son to fulfill the promise enabling the power of the Torah to do what needed to be done.
So it is that the supernatural revelation of God in the Exodus which is already and always embedded in Israel is now continually overcoming more and more the natural mind and its thinking about the Redemption of Israel from Egypt and the nations, always redeeming that thinking itself and regenerating it together with the whole heart and mind and soul of Israel and every child of Israel, natural born or adopted.
Thus we see that the Torah and the Gospel are one, not two.
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