Personal Business With Christ

He cites Abraham in proof that a sinner had immediate, personal business with Christ, and through faith found justification. He rehearses the character of the gospel which had been preached to Abraham, how it told of Christ, and of the sinner, and blessing being put together and alone. "In thee [Abraham's seed, which is Christ] shall all nations be blessed." Precious gospel! Christ, and the sinner, and blessing are bound up together in one bundle. And he goes on to confirm and establish this, by teaching them how Christ bore the curse, and, therefore, surely was entitled to dispense the blessing.
Surely these are witnesses which may well be received, proving the divine character of the religion of faith, which is the sinner's immediate confidence in Christ.
He then goes on to tell us the glorious things which faith accomplishes in us and for us. "After faith is come," he tells us in chapter 3:25-27, "we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Here are precious deeds of faith! It dismisses the schoolmaster; it brings the soul to God as to a father, and then it clothes the believer with the value of Christ, in the eye and acceptance of God. And "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Ch. 4:6. And we are redeemed from "under the law." Ch. 4:5. Can any more full and perfect sense of an immediate dealing between Christ and the soul be conceived, than is expressed and declared by such statements? We are brought from under the law—the schoolmaster, and, with him, tutors and governors are gone—we are children at home in the Father's house, and have the rights and the mind of the First-born Himself imparted to us! Can any condition of soul more blessedly set forth our independence of the resources of a religion of ordinances, and the poor sinner's personal and immediate connection with Christ Himself? But Paul finds the churches in Galatia in a backsliding state.