Righteousness of the Law Fulfilled
Notes
Transcript
We come once more in our careful study of word of God given through the apostle Paul in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans, where we have been studying these last several weeks the grand statements of the gospel to be found in verses 3 and 4,
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
And, I trust you will remember that these verses are the apostle’s own support of Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
Now, thus far we have been looking phrase by phrase through these verses, first considering what the Law could not do, and importantly why it cannot do it, namely that although the Law stands as a certain and absolute witness of the righteousness of God, although it is good and righteous and holy, it is entirely incapable of enabling us to meet its own demands. Indeed, we learned in chapter 7 that not only can it not enable us to meet its demands, but Romans 7:5 declares, “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”
Then, we came to understand the importance of God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh – that He who was to come, He who was looked forward to throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, of whom Abraham rejoiced to see His day, though seeing it in the promises made, though seeing it partially, yet in faith he still rejoiced and it was counted to him as righteousness, this one, God’s own Son, was sent by His Father in the likeness of sinful flesh, “tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin”, declares the author of Hebrews (Heb 4:15).
But the Father did not send Him to wander aimlessly, or as an example for how we ought to live, or as a teacher of moral values. No, He did not wander aimlessly, and His purpose in coming was not primarily as an example or as a teacher, but He came expressly “for sin”; and more precisely as as offering for sin.
And He was that offering for sin, “He condemned sin in the flesh”. That is, His death in the flesh proved to be the condemnation for sin itself. Jesus Christ who knew no sin, became sin for us, and in His flesh bore the punishment rightly owed to we who are in Him, the full and final sentence of condemnation against sin itself has been proclaimed and publicly carried out in the flesh of Jesus, such that sin itself has been stripped of its authority and standing, its power and authority removed for all who are “in Christ Jesus.”
Why did it happen this way? Why did it have to happen this way? Why was it necessary for God to send His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin? Why was it necessary for God to condemn sin in the flesh?
What we are asking, and what Paul provides to us, then, is the purpose and point of God doing what He did.
Let’s pray before we begin.
O Lord our God, we sing praise to You who abide in Zion, we declare Your acts among the nations of the earth, for You, O God, who justly require blood remember them, You do not forget the cry of the afflicted. Be gracious to us, O Yahweh; see our affliction from those who hate we who are Yours. You lift us up from the gates of death, that we may recount all Your praises, that we may rejoice in Your salvation, that we may glory and honor the name of your blessed Son, in whose holy and precious name we pray. Amen!
Now the apostle Paul himself is quite clear on the reason for God acting in the way He did, the trouble we ourselves have is in understanding and more importantly accepting the totality of what he says! For Paul states clearly that the reason why God had to act in this particular way is…
so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Our position is, that the Law can no longer make a claim on us, for its demands of righteousness have been fulfilled in Christ Jesus, that He has already born in His flesh the punishment of the Law which it demands for sin, and that on account of this, the righteousness described by the Law has already been accomplished in us.
So at this point, it is entirely appropriate for us to consider just what is meant by “the righteous requirement of the Law”.
We’ve come across this concept already in our study, as we have referred back to Romans 3, where we read in Romans 3:21,
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
God is inherently righteous, He does not merely meet a standard of righteousness, He Himself is that standard of what righteousness is.
And His one, continual command to those that are His, in both testaments, is “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” This requirement to holiness is not simply an Old Testament, Law of Moses, thing which has been done away with in the coming of Christ to earth. No! Look at what Peter wrote to those who are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet 1:1-2), declaring
Therefore, having girded your minds for action, being sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance,
but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
In other words, we are to be obedient to the commands and will of God, 1 John 2:5 declaring in much the same way, “but whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:” We once acted in ignorance, but now we are called to be obedient children, Peter is saying.
Similarly, we read in 1 John 3:3,
And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Holiness… Righteousness… Purity… these all speak of the same thing, they go hand-in-hand with one another, such that they are inextricably related to one another, they each describe the absolute moral excellence of God Himself.
And there is an ongoing requirement to those who are God’s that they be pure, be holy, be righteous.
Peter was right to call us to a life of holiness, he was right to call us to obedience, to be sober in spirit, and Paul was no different when, after declaring of what God has done, in removing us from the power of sin, to say (Romans 6:11–12) “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,”
Now, there are those who try to say that they don’t care for all of this doctrine, this heavy and weighty thinking, they desire instead to turn to a sure and concrete list of what to do, and what to avoid.
But God had already given that to His people!
He gave it first in Eden, saying in Genesis 2:17, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Yet still, Adam, after His wife Eve ate the fruit of that very tree after having been deceived by the serpent of old, openly and willfully defied God when “she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate” (Gen 3:6). He had a clear command, he could eat from each and every tree except one, and so through that one transgression, “sin entered into the world, and death through sin” (Rom 5:12).
He gave it again at Sinai, declaring
Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
“You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
“You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yahweh your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. “For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.
“You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male slave or his female slave or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Now, you should take note, that these commands came after God had declared them to be His people, this came after God had demonstrated they were His by removing them out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, after the events of Ex 2:23–24 in which we read “Now it happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the slavery, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their slavery rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
No, the words of Exodus 20:2, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” , ought to govern our understanding of this Law, that it was given to a people God has already in His grace has saved, and here God is spelling out for His people just what it means to live as the people of God, that they are called to exhibit a life of holiness consistent with that calling.
And yet, they failed, they didn’t even get past Sinai before they had failed, they failed again and again in the short amount of time it took them to travel from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea, they failed wandering for 40 years in the desert wilderness.
And yet, even still God was faithful to His covenant!
Do we understand the importance of this? That the very generation that received the Law in the “thunder and lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking” (Ex 20:18), and this after having been saved out of the bondage in Egypt by the grace of God, these very same people were entirely unable to keep the Law.
Now, before we begin pointed at them and declaring that we ourselves would have done any better, remember the words of the Psalms quoted by Paul in Romans 3:10-12
as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”
The point is, even after being saved from bondage in Egypt, that generation could not keep the Law; but not stopping there, every subsequent generation has likewise not been able to keep it either.
The old order prophets, from Moses up through the period of the unified kingdom, men like Samuel, Nathan, Gad, Elijah and Elisha stood as the watchmen of God’s people, working within the framework of the covenant of Sinai, holding the Law up as a mirror to the people, that the people would see for themselves their many transgressions of it, calling upon them to repent and to obedience!
Likewise, the pre-exilic prophets, both men such as Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah to the rebellious kingdom of Israel which followed after the sin of Jereboam the son of Nebat, as well as men like Nahum, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah to the wayward kingdom of Judah, all look back to Sinai as remaining the rule of faith and behavior, showing that the people of God in both kingdoms have conducted themselves in a manner which is sure to provoke God to righteous wrath and judgement; they stress that all sin, no matter the extent and no matter the variety of sin, is a transgression of the Law. Yet still, these pre-exilic prophets maintain, is that God remains faithful to His covenant, He will yet save a remnant to be His own possession.
The exilic and post-exilic prophets, men like Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, and Malachi, we see the growing understanding that the final acts of God in salvation and judgement are unable to be ushered in by way of mere reformation, but by the miraculous action on the part of God which must occur outside of the natural order of life, that a supernatural action by God is not only necessary, but also that it is certain.
In other words, the entirety of the Old Testament declares that simply having a list of to follow of things to avoid and things to do, is not sufficient for a person to stand in their own righteousness before God. We are entirely unable to do so!
But what this “list”, this Law, does do for us, is to stand as a witness to the righteousness of God, remember what we read in Romans 3:21,
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
This righteousness of God is not merely the letter of the Law, a cold, dead list of things to do and things to not do. Such a thing is a two-dimensional view of God’s own righteousness, woefully deficient in every regard when compared to the breathtaking 3-dimensional panorama described in Scripture.
Paul himself yet further underscores this understanding of righteousness when he writes in Romans 13:8-10 using the same “fulfilling the law” language as we see here in Romans 8:4, admonishing we who are in Christ Jesus to…
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does not work evil against a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.
So, let’s take that idea of the fulfillment of the law being acting out of love rather than evil against another, and as we consider that immense change in perspective as good news for we who are in Christ Jesus.
For, in Zechariah’s prophecy following the birth of John, in declaring Luke 1:68, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He visited and accomplished redemption for His people,” continuing to speak of the horn of salvation raised up for us in the house of David His servant of salvation, a coming redemption,
To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.
In other words, whether we are reading in the Law, such as in Leviticus 11:45, “‘For I am Yahweh who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.’”, or reading the exhortation to the believer such 1 Peter 1:15–16 “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.””, the people of God are continually and unceasingly called to a life of holy, righteous, perfect living, a life characterized by loving rather than working evil against another.
So when we read our verse before us today,
so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
We realize that we who are in Christ, are distinctly, uniquely, supernaturally made to fulfill the “righteous requirement of the Law”, the righteousness witnessed by the Law.
But there is something vitally important we must notice here, for many have looked at verses like this, teaching like this, and used them as the basis for running back to the Law as the listing of rules for life of the Christian, and that is not what the apostle is saying.
When Paul says that this righteousness “might be fulfilled in us”; this is not something for us to accomplish alone, but this is something that is done in us, and done for us.
We could never accomplish this on our own, this righteousness is done to us, meaning that we are recipients of a righteousness that is not our own, but it has been imputed to us. But this righteousness is also done “in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” We then take that righteouesness that was not our own, and that righteousness becomes our own manner of life, if we are truly in Christ Jesus. In this, the righteous requirement of the Law is likewise imparted to us.
By the merit of Christ having condemned sin in the flesh, we are freed not only from the guilt of sin, but also from the tyranny of sin. In other words, we who are in Christ are now able to live in true righteousness. And, indeed, we will live in righteousness, should we “walk according to the Spirit”, something which is guaranteed and descriptive of all who are “in Christ Jesus”.
For we must note, that this is not a description of some who are in Christ, but of all who are of faith like that of Abraham in the finished work of Christ Jesus, all who are “in Christ.”
This transformation, this change occuring in us for the purpose of our doing righteousness is not really a new topic for Paul, remember that supremely important verse in Romans 7:4?
So, my brothers, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
And again, we recall the words in Romans 6:17-18,
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were given over, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
You see, what Paul is saying here in Romans 8:4, is in many ways a restatement and expansion on what he had already told us, namely that the purpose for which God condemned sin in the flesh, that is, in the sinless flesh of His own Son who was also sent as an offering for sin, was:
so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Seventeenth-century English Puritan Thomas Manton is entirely correct when he points out that Christ never came to dissolve our obligation to God, but rather to promote it.
For if the goal were only to release us from all law over us, from every rule and authority over us, that would make we ourselves supreme, we would be independent.
And in reality, that “independence” is what those who we call “antinomians” desire, to feel as if they are free and clear of any law, that they may behave in any way they like. They desire to be free from the bounds of the Law, yes, but they also want to be a law to themselves, that “every man [does] what [is] right in his own eyes”, the very condemnation of Judges 17 when there was no king in Israel.
No, such a scheme serves only to establish and encourage the very rebellion that Christ Jesus was sent by His Father to end. That was the point of Luke 1:74–75 we read earlier, that He came “To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”
No, rather than being saved in order to leave us to live as we please, instead He came to restore us to obedience, to bring us back again in heart and life to God.
This is the nature of those who “walk… according to the Spirit”.
He came, He lived, He died, He rose again, so that the righteous requirement of the Law, the righteousness of God, might be fulfilled in us, proving once more that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Let us Pray!