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LESSON 5

*July 24 - 30

Justification and the Law

Read for This Week's Study:

Memory Text:

*Study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, July 31.

The Law Established

Read Romans 3:31. What’s Paul’s point here? Why is this point important to us as Adventists?

In this passage, Paul states emphatically that faith does not make void God’s law. Even those who kept the law, even the entire Old Testament corpus of law, were never saved by it. The religion of the Old Testament, as that of the New, was always one of God’s grace given to sinners by faith.

Read Romans 4:1–8. How does this show that even in the Old Testament, salvation was by faith and not by works of the law?

According to this Old Testament narrative, Abraham was accounted righteous because he “believed God.” Therefore, the Old Testament itself teaches righteousness by faith. Hence, any implication that faith “makes void” (Greek katargeo, “renders useless,” “invalidates”) the law is false; salvation by faith is very much part of the Old Testament. Grace is taught all the way through it. What, for instance, was the entire sanctuary ritual if not a representation of how sinners are saved, not by their own works but by the death of a substitute in their stead?

Also, what else can explain how David was forgiven after the sordid affair with Bathsheba? Certainly it wasn’t law-keeping that saved him, for he violated so many principles of the law that it condemned him on numerous counts. If David were to be saved by the law, then David would not be saved at all.

Paul sets forth David’s restoration to divine favor as an example of justification by faith. Forgiveness was an act of God’s grace. Here, then, is another example from the Old Testament of righteousness by faith. In fact, however legalistic many in ancient Israel became, the Jewish religion was always a religion of grace. Legalism was a perversion of it, not its foundation.

Dwell for a few minutes on David’s sin and restoration (2 Samuel 11, 12; Psalm 51). What hope can you draw from that sad story for yourself? Is there a lesson here in how we in the church should treat those who have fallen?

Grace or Debt

The issue Paul is dealing with here is much more than just theology. It gets to the heart and soul of salvation and of our relationship to God. If one believes that he or she must earn acceptance, that he or she must reach a certain standard of holiness before being justified and forgiven, then how natural to turn inward and to look to oneself and one’s deeds. Religion can become exceedingly self-centered, about the last thing anyone needs.

In contrast, if one grasps the great news that justification is a gift from God, totally unmerited and undeserved, how much easier and more natural is it for that person to turn his or her focus on God’s love and mercy instead of on self?

And in the end, who’s more likely to reflect the love and character of God—the one self-absorbed or the one God-absorbed?

Read Romans 4:6–8. How does Paul here expand on the theme of justification by faith?  

“The sinner must come in faith to Christ, take hold of His merits, lay his sins upon the Sin Bearer, and receive His pardon. It was for this cause that Christ came into the world. Thus the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the repenting, believing sinner. He becomes a member of the royal family.”—Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, book 1, p. 215.

Paul then continues, explaining that salvation by faith was not only for the Jews but for the Gentiles, as well (Rom. 4:9–12). In fact, if you want to get technical about it, Abraham wasn’t Jewish; he came from a pagan ancestry (Josh. 24:2). The Gentile-Jewish distinction didn’t exist in his time. When Abraham was justified (Gen. 15:6), he was not even circumcised. Thus, Abraham became the father of both the uncircumcised and the circumcised, as well as a great example for Paul to use in order to make his point about the universality of salvation. Christ’s death was for everyone, regardless of race or nationality (Heb. 2:9).

Considering the universality of the Cross, considering what the Cross tells us about the worth of every human being, why is racial or ethnic or national prejudice such a horrible thing? How can we learn to recognize the existence of prejudice in ourselves and through God’s grace purge it from our minds?

Promise and Law

“For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13).

In this verse, “promise” and “law” are contrasted. Paul is seeking to establish an Old Testament base for his teaching of righteousness by faith. He finds an example in Abraham, whom all the Jews accepted as their ancestor. Acceptance or justification had come to Abraham quite apart from law. God made a promise to Abraham that he was to be “heir of the world.” Abraham believed this promise; that is, he accepted the role that it implied. As a result God accepted him and worked through him to save the world. This remains a powerful example of how grace was operating in the Old Testament, which is no doubt why Paul used it.

Read Romans 4:14–17. How does Paul here continue showing how salvation by faith was central to the Old Testament? See also Gal. 3:7–9.

It’s important to remember, as we said in the beginning, to whom Paul is writing. These Jewish believers were immersed in Old Testament law, and many came to believe that their salvation rested on how well they kept the law, even though that was not what the Old Testament taught.

In seeking to remedy this misconception, Paul argued that Abraham, even prior to the law at Sinai, received the promises, not by works of the law (which would have been hard, since the law—the whole Torah and ceremonial system—was not in place yet) but by faith.

If Paul here were referring to the moral law exclusively, which existed in principle even before Sinai, the point remains the same. Perhaps even more so! Seeking to receive God’s promises through the law, he said, makes faith void, even useless. Those are strong words, but his point is that faith saves, and the law condemns. He’s trying to teach about the futility of seeking salvation by the very thing that leads to condemnation, because we all, Jew and Gentile, have violated the law, and, hence, we all need the same thing as Abraham did: the saving righteousness of Jesus credited to us by faith.

Law and Faith

As we saw yesterday, Paul showed that God’s dealings with Abraham proved that salvation came through the promise of grace and not through law. Therefore, if the Jews wished to be saved, they would have to abandon trust in their works for salvation and accept the Abrahamic promise, now fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah. It’s the same, really, for everyone, Jew or Gentile, who thinks that their “good” deeds are all that it takes to make them right with God.

“The principle that man can save himself by his own works lay at the foundation of every heathen religion. . . . Wherever it is held, men have no barrier against sin.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, pp. 35, 36. What does this mean? Why does the idea that we can save ourselves through our works leave us so open to sin?

How did Paul explain the relationship between law and faith in Galatians? Gal. 3:21–23.

If there had been a law that could impart life, it certainly would have been God’s law. And yet, Paul says that no law, not even God’s, can give life, because all have violated that law, and so all are condemned by it.

But the promise of faith, more fully revealed through Christ, frees all who believe from being “under the law”; that is, from being condemned and burdened by trying to earn salvation through it. The law becomes a burden when it’s presented without faith, without grace—because without faith, without grace, without the righteousness that comes by faith, being under the law means being under the burden and the condemnation of sin.

How central is righteousness by faith to your walk with God? That is, what can you do to make sure it doesn’t get blurred by other aspects of truth to the point where you lose sight of this crucial teaching? After all, what good are these other teachings without this one?

The Law and Sin

We often hear folk say that in the New Covenant the law has been abolished and then they proceed to quote texts that they believe prove that point. The logic behind that statement, however, isn’t quite sound, nor is the theology.

Read 1 John 2:3–6, 3:4 and Romans 3:20. What do these texts tell us about the relationship between law and sin?  

A few hundred years ago, Irish writer Jonathan Swift wrote: “But will any man say that if the words drinking, cheating, lying, stealing were by Act of Parliament ejected out of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning temperate, honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair consequence?”—Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal and Other Satires, (New York: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 205.

In the same way, if God's law has been abolished, then why are lying, murder, and stealing still sinful or wrong? If God's law has been changed, then the definition of sin must be changed, too. Or if God's law was done away with, then sin must be, as well, and who believes that? (See also 1 John 1:7–10; James 1:14, 15.)

In the New Testament, both the law and the gospel appear. The law shows what sin is; the gospel points to the remedy for that sin, which is the death and resurrection of Jesus. If there is no law, there is no sin, and so what are we saved from? Only in the context of the law, and its continued validity, does the gospel make sense.

We often hear that the Cross nullified the law. That’s rather ironic, because the Cross shows that the law can’t be abrogated or changed. If God didn’t abrogate or even change the law before Christ died on the cross, why do it after? Why not get rid of the law after humanity sinned and thus spare humanity the legal punishment that violation of the law brings? That way, Jesus never would have had to die. Jesus’ death shows that if the law could have been changed or abrogated, that should have been done before, not after, the Cross. Thus, nothing shows the continued validity of the law more than does the death of Jesus, a death that occurred precisely because the law couldn’t be changed. If the law could have been changed to meet us in our fallen condition, wouldn’t that have been a better solution to the problem of sin than Jesus having to die?

If there were no divine law against adultery, would the act cause any less pain and hurt than it does now to those who are victims of it? How does your answer help you understand why God’s law is still in effect? What has been your own experience with the consequences of violating God’s law?

Further Study:  

Discussion Questions:

Why is it so important to understand salvation by faith alone without the deeds of law? What kind of errors can that knowledge protect us from? What dangers await those who lose sight of this crucial biblical teaching?      What other reasons can you give for the continued validity of God’s law, even when we understand that the law and obedience to it are not what saves us?      Dwell more on this idea that because of the Cross all human beings are equal. Why is it that so often Christians, who have the Cross before them, seem to forget this important truth and can be guilty of racial or ethnic or even national prejudice?     Dwell more on this idea that because of the Cross all human beings are equal. Why is it that so often Christians, who have the Cross before them, seem to forget this important truth and can be guilty of racial or ethnic or even national prejudice?

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