From Behind the Veil

In one of his posthumously published series of lectures ( Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ ), TF Torrance writes of the incarnation as God coming from behind the veil of the law. The law is a barrier, a form of bondage, since it is “a form of self-imprisonment because it is the result of sin and because in sin mankind chooses to have the barrier of the law flung round them as a sort of protection from the immediate presence of God.” Yet, “it is God himself who imprisons humanity within that bondage, for by the law, in the thought of Paul, humanity is shut up unto sin and disobedience.” While human beings harden their hearts, God also hardens, and “hands them over to a ‘reprobate mind.’”

Until the incarnation, “God’s mighty saving intervention” when He reveals His righteousness: “then at last God steps out from behind the law, from behind the veil which Moses wore on his face, from behind the veil of the holy of holies, for God unveils himself immediately.  He comes to man and apart from law reveals his righteousness to humanity directly in Jesus Christ, cutting through all distance and abstraction, all law and religion, and sets men and women before him face to face.”