"Where is the glorying?"
The Jews were a glorying people; they gloried in God (see Romans 2:17), and they gloried in the Law (Romans 2:23). But now? All glorying was shut out.
I. THE FALSE GLORYING. Man's almost universal perversion of religion. Religion should humble him, but he makes it the occasion of boasting. So eminently with the Jews.
1. In the Law. The Law was designed to teach sin, and quicken their longings for holiness. It had become an apparatus of self-righteousness.
2. In God. God made himself known to them, that through them he might be made known to others. And God was one. They, however, rested in him as theirs alone; and the very doctrine of the oneness of God was made the badge of separateness, and an instrument of bigotry.
II. GLORYING EXCLUDED. God will teach man humility; as towards himself, as towards man's fellow-men. And the gospel is a potent instrumentality to this end. So, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."
1. The law of faith: to which "the Law" must logically lead. We receive, as suppliants, on bended knee. "Not of works, lest any man should beast" (Ephesians 2:9).
2. The God of all. The very truth they held belied their pretensions; the God of all must be a God to all. So, then, the gospel was God's gift of grace to men, to be accepted by man's faith. None could do more; none might do less.
Our Christian knowledge and belief, our name of Christ, an occasion of glorying? Yes, in a true sense (Galatians 6:14), but not boastfully. For the one should teach us a deep humility, with faith; the other a large, unfailing charity. "He is Lord of all."—T.F.L.