Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
Blotting out--Greek, "Having wiped out"; coincident in time with "having forgiven you" (Colossians 2:13); hereby having cancelled the law's indictment against you. The law (including especially the moral law, wherein lay the chief difficulty in obeying) is abrogated to the believer, as far as it was a compulsory, accusing code, and as far as "righteousness" (justification) and "life" were sought for by it. It can only produce outward works, not inward obedience of the will, which in the believer flows from the Holy Spirit in Him (Romans 3:21; Romans 7:2, Romans 7:4; Galatians 2:19).
the handwriting of ordinances--rather, "IN ordinances" (see on Ephesians 2:15); "the law of commandments contained in ordinances." "The handwriting" (alluding to the Decalogue, the representative of the law, written by the hand of God) is the whole law, the obligatory bond, under which all lay; the Jews primarily were under the bond, but they in this respect were the representative people of the world (Romans 3:19); and in their inability to keep the law was involved the inability of the Gentiles also, in whose hearts "the work of the law was written" (Romans 2:15); and as they did not keep this, they were condemned by it.
that was against us . . . contrary to us--Greek "adversary to us"; so it is translated, Hebrews 10:27. "Not only was the law against us by its demands, but also an adversary to us by its accusations" [BENGEL]. TITTMANN explains the Greek, "having a latent contrariety to us"; not open designed hostility, but virtual unintentional opposition through our frailty; not through any opposition in the law itself to our good (Romans 7:7-12, Romans 7:14; 1 Corinthians 15:56; Galatians 3:21; Hebrews 10:3). The "WRITING" is part of "that which was contrary to us"; for "the letter killeth" (see on 2 Corinthians 3:6).
and took it--Greek, and hath taken it out of the way" (so as to be no longer a hindrance to us), by "nailing it to the cross." Christ, by bearing the curse of the broken law, has redeemed us from its curse (Galatians 3:13). In His person nailed to the cross, the law itself was nailed to it. One ancient mode of cancelling bonds was by striking a nail through the writing: this seems at that time to have existed in Asia [GROTIUS]. The bond cancelled in the present case was the obligation lying against the Jews as representatives of the world, and attested by their amen, to keep the whole law under penalty of the curse (Deuteronomy 27:26; Nehemiah 10:29).
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Hosea 13:12
Ephesians 2:15
Colossians 2:20
1 Timothy 2:5
1 Peter 3:22
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