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J. N. Darby.
(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)
As regards the law and the teachers of the law, the world, as it is, is in no wise save materially the world made by God. God made Paradise and man lost it; and the world grew up as it is as a system formed by the action of Satan on man's lusts and passions, let it be murder or music and civilization, for Cain began both.
Now the way back was wholly closed - man could not return to Paradise. Of this I have often spoken, but the law was the rule for man on earth, but it could not take man back to Paradise, could not carry on a sinner to God in heaven. Man had not been made as man for heaven; the earth was given him, but this the law could not restore - it was given to the first man. Hence now, if we are to be with God it must be a state suited for heaven itself, and partaking of the glory of God. For we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and in sinning come short of that glory. The law deals with man on earth and applies to him there, but Christ has taken, in virtue of His work, a place as Man in heaven and in glory. He introduces us into that new sphere and heavenly Paradise, into "the holiest by a new and living way." This is a wholly new thing. It shows us, by making us know God, the perfect righteousness and rightness, the perfection of the law as addressed to responsible man on earth as rule of his conduct on earth as the first man. But to bring back the Christian to it is to bring him back from the heavenly position of Christ before God to the impossible condition of the first Adam - sinner on the earth, where there is no way back. They have turned back from the way forward, which is Christ risen and death to the old system, to arrive there.
The law is not made for a righteous man; I must then give up my righteousness to take back the place of unrighteousness out of Christ to apply it.
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The certainty of a fact by sight is not belief, because, as far as it is worth anything, it is certainty not belief - nothing to accredit it but perception.