As for the commandment, even though it is not reckoned to be a law, yet because it is spoken and decreed by the Lord to His servant, it has the character of a law, so that one may choose what He wills—either to keep it as a friend and faithful servant, or to despise it as a slave subject under the law. Hence the Saviour also gave a commandment to the apostles, as to friends and faithful ones, the very thing He had likewise given to Adam our father before he sinned; but after the sin, it was no longer a commandment of fellowship and kinship and love and brotherhood, but it decreed the judgment of a severity to be feared—namely, in the case of those who despise the sentences of the law, as Moses also says: 'Cursed is everyone who does not abide in the ordinances of this book.'
For this reason the Saviour also admonished what had been spoken in the Law, and approved what had been given before the Law under those most blessed men, so that He might join His own teaching to that of those former ones, and thus equally unite the many who thus believed and were circumcised, and likewise associate the natural ones—that is, the believing Gentiles—and condemn the unbelief of the unwilling Jews and others, together with the joined ignorance of both.