But you claimed that "the Law is still our teacher." (like a schoolmaster)
And I showed you that was not true. Yet you continue to claim "the Law is still our teacher." You need to sort this out.
Galatians 3:23-25 KJV
But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Your mixing your metaphors, I'm not really contradicting what your saying:
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. (Romans 3:21)
Both the Law and the Prophets testify to the righteousness of God. There is also a natural revelation that shows us God's divine attributes and eternal nature (Rom. 1:18-20), there is the law of conscience (Romans 2:14-15). 'But now', the two most important words in Romans if not Scripture, the actual righteousness of God has been made known, in Christ.
Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. (Galatians 3:21-22)
The Law itself was never the problem, we are the problem, the Law was telling us what the righteous requirements of God were, it just couldn't provide it. Paul even said the commandment (thou shall not covet) was, 'holy, righteous and good' (see Rom. 7:11-13). The problem has never been the Law itself, the problem is within us, within you, and within me, where we cry along with the Apostle, 'Oh wretched man that I am'!
What I am trying to explain is there is a balance between the Antinomianism of the gnostics, which is licentiousness, and the legalism of the ancient Jews that Jesus was at odds with. If your walking along a path, does it really matter which ditch on either side you fall into? Jesus explains toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, 'But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' (Matt. 7:14)
I know what your saying about the Law being a schoolmaster, even a taskmaster. The righteousness of God in Christ is the very embodiment of the Law, in spirit and truth. What we are not going to get any benefit from is circumcision and observing rites and rituals that are shadows of the righteousness that is by grace through faith.
To be sure, this is not a simple matter, theologians have wrestled with this the entire history of the Church. My approach is to bear in mind there are two extremes, legalism and licentiousness and both are equally dangerous to us spiritually.
Grace and peace,
Mark
For Luther, if one would lose the proclamation of the Law, one would also lose the sweet gospel which sets sinners free from condemnation. He said, “Yet it is safest to turn to a middle road, to turn too much neither to the right nor to the left. For both are dangerous, and, as I said already, for this reason also, the office of the word was instituted, that we might teach both, that is, the Law and the Gospel. The one cannot properly be taught or dealt with safely without the other…So here too one must divide well, lest only one part be taught in the churches—either fear and sorrow or consolation and joy—but both at the same time.”[4] Both Law and Gospel are necessary for repentance: the Law which works contrition (sorrow for sin) and the Gospel which works faith in the promise of forgiveness.
