When we last talked (well, I typed and you read), we were seeing how incompatible the Christian life is with trying to live by God’s laws. If God expects us to live in obedience to His commandments in order to get Him to love us or to keep loving us, then He has set us up for failure. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians, the Ten Commandments kills and is a ministry of death and condemnation. Sure doesn’t sound like a way to live to me.
But that’s not all Paul had to say about the law. He further explained that God’s laws were never intended for Gentiles in the first place. As he stated in Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law.” Gentiles were never under the law. He made that point abundantly clear in the previous chapter when he said, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.” (Romans 2:14) So if you are a non-Jewish Christian, the law never applied to you, and that includes the Ten Commandments.
However, it goes even further than that. Even if you are a Jewish Christian, the law does not apply to you either. In fact, it simply does not apply to any Christians. Look at the following verse and let the truth sink deep into your mind and heart.
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)
There it is, simple and to the point. We Christians are not under the law. And why are we no longer under law? Because we are dead to the law, as Paul declared in the following verses.
So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:4-6)
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. (Galatians 2:19)
Dying to the law was critical so that we would no longer be enslaved to it. This allows us to truly live for God. Besides, as I mentioned in my previous post, we couldn’t live up to it’s perfect standards anyway, no matter how hard we try. That’s evident in these next two verses.
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law. (Romans 3:20a)
So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:16)
Did you see it? No one, not even Christians, will be justified or declared righteous by obedience to the law. That’s because all of us are guilty before the law, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) As James states, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10) That’s why Jesus did what he did to free us from the law. Consider the following verses.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one (Jews and Gentiles) and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. (Ephesians 2:14-15a)
So Jesus set aside the law and redeemed us from its curse. Praise the Lord! Could you imagine our salvation being dependent on our ability to follow it without fault? “No way!” you say. “Impossible!” you declare. You’re right on both accounts. That’s why Jesus did what he did on the cross. As Paul said to the Romans:
Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4)
And there is the good news in a nutshell. We are righteous, not because we obey God’s law, but because we believe. We are righteous, not because of anything we have done to earn it, but because Christ did it for us.
That’s the essence of grace. God knew we could never live up to the requirements of the law, so He gave us another way – through faith in Christ. Trying to live by the law is a losing proposition and a way of life that can never please God. It is only through faith that we can please God. (Hebrews 11:6) We come to Christ in faith and we are to live in Christ by faith everyday. It is by faith from first to last. (Romans 1:17)
God’s grace has freed us from the law. That is something to celebrate and should fill us with great joy! The frustration of trying to prove ourselves worthy is over. It died with Christ on the cross. But that is not all that His grace has freed us from. We will explore the freedom we have through grace more deeply in the my next post. May God’s grace be with you all.
Essential Grace 