Hearty Faith and Confession unto Salvation, Part 1

"What is the righteousness which is of the law? …Do, and live. Though it directs us to a better and more effectual righteousness in Christ, yet in itself, considered as a law abstracted from its respect to Christ and the gospel (for so the unbelieving Jews embraced and retained it), it owneth nothing as a righteousness sufficient to justify a man but that of perfect obedience…. The doing supposed must be perfect and sinless, without the least breach or violation. The law which was given upon Mount Sinai, though it was not a pure covenant of works (for who then could be saved under that dispensation?) yet, that is might be the more effectual to drive people to Christ and to make the covenant of grace welcome, it had a very great mixture of the strictness and terror of the covenant of works…. What is that righteousness which is of faith…. This he describes in the words of Moses, in Deuteronomy…where there was a much clearer revelation of Christ and the gospel than there was in the first giving of the law: he quotes it from Deut. 30:11-14, and shows That it is not at all hard or difficult. The way of justification and salvation has in it no such depths or knots as may discourage us, no insuperable difficulties attending it; but, as was foretold, it is a high-way, Isaiah 35:8." – Matthew Henry