Justification is Never By Obedience to the Law (Doctrinal Bible Church in Huntsville, Alabama)

Doctrinal Bible Church

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Wednesday June 21, 2023

Justification Series: Justification is Never By Obedience to the Law

Lesson # 4

In Romans 2:13, Paul teaches that the doers of the Law and not the hearers of the Law will be justified in the sense of being approved by God.

Romans 2:11 For God does not show favoritism. 12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (NIV84)

Now because man is a sinner by nature and totally depraved, having absolutely no merit with God, he has absolutely no chance of rendering the perfect obedience required by God to be justified by obedience to the Law.

Therefore, men and women can only be justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 2:13 explains Paul’s last statement in Romans 2:12 with reference to the Jews and emphatically negates the statement that the hearers of the Law are just before God.

In emphatic terms, Paul refutes the delusion of the self-righteous Jew that he can be just before God by only being a hearer of the Law and not a doer.

This statement teaches that the Jews who were given the Mosaic Law and were under its jurisdiction will also receive eternal condemnation.

We know that Paul is referring to the Jews in Romans 2:13 since the Jews were given the Law by God in written form.

Unlike the Gentiles, the Jews heard the Law read and taught by the Rabbis in their synagogues and the Herodian Temple when it stood in Jerusalem.

Paul is saying that even though this was the case, they are still condemned before God because to hear the Law was not enough since God demanded perfect obedience to it.

“The Law” is the noun nomos (νόμος), which is a reference to the Mosaic Law and is used with such terms as the prophets, and writings, as a title for the entire Old Testament Scripture, but in this way it looks at them in their division (Luke 24:27, 44).

It is especially used of the first five books of the Old Testament or the Mosaic Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). (Compare Luke 2:23; John 8:5; 1 Corinthians 9:9; Galatians 3:10).

The term is used of the entire specific Mosaic code given to the nation Israel to govern and guide their moral, religious and secular life, and covers parts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 4:8, 44-45) and is used of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17).

Though part of the Law was mediated by angels, God is the origin and source of the Mosaic Law, which stems from the eternal and holy character of God, which is true even of the natural law written in the heart or conscience of man (Exodus 31:1b; Acts 7:53; Romans 2:14-16; Hebrews 2:1-2).

It is common to divide the Mosaic Law into three parts, but though this is helpful for analysis and the study of the Mosaic Law and the way it functions, such a division is never stated as such in Scripture but rather it is seen as a unit.

Part 1: The Moral Law or the Ten Commandments. This part of the Law governed the moral life-giving guidance to Israel in principles of right and wrong in relation to God and man (Exodus 20:1-17).

Part 2: The Ordinances or the Ceremonial Law. This was the spiritual portion of Law, which guided and provided for Israel in her worship and spiritual relationship and fellowship with God and it included the priesthood, tabernacle and sacrifices (Exodus 25-31: Leviticus).

Part 3: The Judgments, or the Social Law. This part of the Law governed Israel in her secular, social, political, and economic life (Exodus 21:1–23:13).

Though the Law is usually divided into three parts, as described above, it is important to see that it was an indivisible unit.

The Jews did not view the Law as having a three-fold division but rather they divided the 613 commandments of the Law into twelve families of commandments which were then subdivided into twelve additional families of positive and twelve additional families of negative commands.

The Law was never designed to be a permanent rule of life but rather was simply a tutor or guardian to guide Israel and reveal her need for the Savior, Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:7, 11; Galatians 3:23-24; Romans 10:4).

The Mosaic Law is weak because it is dependent on sinful man’s ability and is especially weak when adopted as a system of merit (Romans 8:3) and stands in contrast to the grace of God as now manifested in the coming of Christ (Romans 6:14; 7:6; 8:3; Galatians 3:12).

The Mosaic Law was given only to Israel (Exodus 19:3; Leviticus 26:46; Romans 3:19; 9:4) and was not given to the Gentiles of the Old Testament or the Church (Acts 15:5; 15:24; Romans 8:14; Galatians 2:19) and it cannot justify an individual before God (Romans 3:20-28; Galatians 2:16) and could not provide eternal salvation for men (Galatians 3:21-26).

The Mosaic Law could not provide the Holy Spirit and could not solve the problems of the old sin nature (Romans 8:2-3) and it could not make perfect, or permanently deal with sin (Hebrews 7:19) nor could it sanctify (Galatians 3:21; 5:5; Romans 8:3).

However, Israel approached the Law as a system of merit, shifting from a faith basis to a works basis (Exodus 19:8; Romans 10:3).

The Word of God emphatically teaches us that the Law brings a curse (Galatians 3:10-12), brings death (2 Corinthians 3:6-7; Romans 7:9-10), brings condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:9), makes offenses abound (Romans 5:10; 7:7-13).

The Law declares all men guilty (Romans 3:19), and holds men in bondage to sin and death (Galatians 4:3-5, 9, 24; Romans 7:10-14).

All this is because man possesses an old Adamic sin nature that can never fulfill the righteousness of the Law, especially in the spirit of the Law and thus, mankind always falls short and condemned guilty before a Holy God (Romans 3:19).

The Law reveals to man just who and what he is, namely, sinful and separated from God by an infinite gulf that he is unable to bridge in his own human strength.

It was given to shut man up to faith, i.e., to exclude the works of the Law (or any system of works) as a system of merit for either salvation or sanctification and thereby lead him to Christ as the only means of righteousness (Galatians 3:19-20, 20-24; 1 Timothy 1:8-9; Romans 3:21-24).

Christ fulfilled the Ten Commandments by living a perfect and sinless life and so when man trusts in Christ as his Savior, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to that individual so we have justification (Romans 4) resulting in the fact that the Law can’t condemn us (Romans 8:1; 7:1-6; Romans 5:1; 4:4-8).

Christ fulfilled the ceremonial ordinances, the shadows and types of His person and work, by dying on the cross for us and in our place, which demonstrated that God was also perfect justice and sin must be judged, but God provided His Son, the precious Lamb of God.

The penalty, which the Law exercised, was paid in full at the cross and so there is no condemnation because the believer is “in Christ” (Col. 2:14; Romans 3:24-25).

Church age believers are not under the Mosaic law, but many of its principles have been carried over and are part of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ (Romans 8:2) or the law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2).

In this, some of the former commands are carried over (Romans 13:9), some new commands and guidelines are added (Ephesians 4:11f; 1 Timothy 3:1f; 4:4), and some have been revised, as in the case of capital punishment, which is to be exercised by human government (Romans 13:4).

The Law is still good from the standpoint of its main function and purpose (1 Timothy 1:8-10; James 2:1-10; Galatians 5:1-3; 6:1), which is how James uses the Law, to reveal sin (James 2:9), to get believers out of self-righteous legalism, and move them into a walk by faith in a living Savior.

The believer is never saved by keeping the Law (Galatians 2:21) and he is not under the Law as a rule of life, i.e., sacrifice, Sabbath keeping, tithing (Rev. 6:14; Acts 15:5, 24).

Therefore, he does not walk by the Law but by the Spirit, which is the new law for the New Testament saint (Romans 8:4; Galatians 5:5), which is law of liberty through faith in the power of God.

The believer is dead to the Law (Rom. 7:1-6; Gal. 2:19) by virtue of his identification with Jesus Christ in His death, who fulfilled the Law and he is to fulfill the righteousness of the Law as seen in Christ’s words in Matthew 10:37-40 love for God, and love for one’s neighbor (James 2:9).

But this can only be fulfilled through the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit who furnishes the believer the power or ability needed to live the Christian life according to the eternal moral law of God.

Therefore, church age believers are under God’s new law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2-4).

So therefore, in Romans 2:13, Paul teaches that only the doers of the Law and not the hearers of the Law are justified before the Supreme Court of Heaven, however, there has never been nor will there ever be a human being that has ever kept the Law except Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the moment a person exercises faith in Christ as his Savior, God the Father imputes Christ’s righteousness to him resulting in his being justified before God (Romans 4).

This also results in the fact that the Law can never condemn the believer in Jesus Christ since Christ fulfilled the righteous requirements of the Law (Romans 8:1; 7:1-6; Romans 5:1; 4:4-8).

Since the Lord Jesus Christ fulfills the Law by His person and work at the cross, church age believers are to live their lives by the Spirit of Life through faith in the Word of God (Romans 8:2-4).