Faith fulfills the Law through Christ

Berean sent another teaching today on Romans 2. You may want to check it out here:

http://theberean.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Home.showBerean/BereanID/3690/Romans-2-12-13

Generally this is what brother John W. Ritenbaugh is saying:

- It is God's will that we live moral lives through living by the law
- That law only applies to non-Christians and Christians alike
- We will be judged according to what we know (of the law)

Next I want to emphasize on this paragraph,

"The called must realize that, because of their calling, the requirements—and thus the judgments—are much stiffer since they know so much more. This is why Paul says in Romans 3:31, "Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law." Faith upholds law or makes it firm because the law points out what righteousness, love, and sin are, and guides us in how faith is to be used." The Berean Email Blash, John Ritenbaugh

Now why am I so hard on brother John on what he is trying to say here? Ok...is the law important? Yes it is....and why is it important? Because the law points to our weaknesses and thus our unholiness and to justify our need for a saviour. It is that simple.

Faith establishes the law? I think brother John got it really wrong here. The whole passage, if read carefully, point to Apostle Paul's arguments that by faith we fulfill the law. Or we can cover the law by faith. How do we know that?

Very simply, in chapter 4 verse 13 (using NLT) it says:

"It is clear, then, that God's promise to give the whole earth to Abraham and his descendents was not based on obedience to God's law, but on the new relationship with God that comes by faith."

If we are to look into chapter 3 and 4 as a whole especially these two verses and particular chapter 3 verse 31, we can deduce easily that the argument that law is important so that faith is needed to establish it does not seem to merge with Chapter 4 verse 13. Very quickly, brother John argues that law is important whereas Apostle Paul who says that "it is clear" that the new relationship with God do not come by law but by faith!

If that's the case, chapter 4 verse 13 would match exactly to the whole epistle of what Apostle Paul is teaching...that we are dead to law and alive to God by faith through the Grace of God, through the work on the cross.

Brother John is trying to establish the rule of law in the Christian life which is not what Jesus wants to do. Jesus has establish our right to be sons of God not because of our obedience to the law, but because we believe in the work on the cross. Jesus has already fulfilled the law on our behalf when He was judged on the cross. So by the act of fulfilling the law, are we saying that Jesus sacrifice is not enough?

"Now this wonderful truth - that God declared him to be righteous - wasn't just for Abraham's benefit. It was for us, too, assuring us that God will also declare us to be righteous if we believe in God, who brought Jesus our Lord back from the dead. He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised from the dead to make us right with God." Romans 4:23-25

Brother John is right. God wants us to be perfect, and to be perfect means to be moral and to be moral is basically be right with God: being righteous. That's the reason why morality have standards. But has brother John realised that by knowing those standards, what is God trying to tell us? That the law just tells us that we can never be moral. As Jesus has asked, "Who is good?"

But there's another use of the law, that is guide us in our daily living IN THE HOLY SPIRIT. Now the spirit of the message in Paul's letter to the Romans is fundamentally different from message that brother John is trying to espouse here. Brother John is saying that we ought to live by the law to be justified by God or we will be judged by God.

Apostle Paul's epistle is saying the opposite. By living in faith, we are already living by the law since faith gives righteousness thus righteousness fulfills the law automatically.

The beauty of all this is that by living in faith, the Holy Spirit can work in us and through us to enable us to live out the law in our flesh. This is different because we are already saved by believing and believing will allow us to work our way to the image that God's has originally planned.

Belief/faith can never happen if we fulfill all the law. Faith is needed before we do anything. If we fulfill the law first, then there is no need for faith. For example, I believe in God in giving me a good job but if out of my own strength I found a job, do I need faith to get it? No..because I already got the job.

But work through faith is different from work through law or works. One has belief in God to give whereas the other has belief in self to gain.

We ought to live in faith since by law, we can never attain righteousness.