Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Justification as Alignment with God
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Romans 3:31
In his writings, Paul uses these terms—faith, grace, and justification—interchangeably. He uses one word here, another there, depending on which nuance he wants to bring to the fore, so that we get a complete picture of what is happening. Here, he is talking about faith, and within the subject of justification, he says, "No, faith in the blood of Jesus Christ establishes the law!" not "does away with" it. Faith in no way invalidates God's law. None of it! Notice that your Bible very likely reads "the law." However, it does not say that in the Greek; the definite article does not precede "law" either time it appears in this verse. The Interlinear Bible, which is a literal translation, reads: "Law then do we nullify through faith? Not let it be! But law do we establish." Establish means "cause to stand, confirm." One might argue, "What difference does the lack of an article make?" In this case, if it read "the law," Paul would have been referring to either the entire Pentateuch or to a specific law. But writing it as he did, he means law in general as a legal argument. Any law! Man's law, God's law, the Ten Commandments, the sacrifices—everything is included under that blanket statement. He says, "Faith establishes law." It remains for other passages to tell us about a specific law or body of laws that might be set aside. So, then, faith—used here in connection with grace and justification—establishes law. It does NOT do away with it; such an interpretation is the exact opposite of what is written! When a person is justified, it is for the very reason that he is out of alignment with what he is being measured against. So after justification, the standard is not just thrown away! Indeed, the standard becomes more important than ever because we do not want to get out of alignment ever again. We need the law's guidance to help us in what we must do and to warn us when we are veering from the way.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Four)
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Romans 3:31
Some translations, such as the English Standard Version and the New International Version, render this as, “Do we then overthrow [or nullify] the law by this faith?” (Emphasis ours throughout). Paul is writing about a particular application of faith, not simply belief or trust in God. He discusses the specific application in verses 21-26, which are about faith in Christ's sacrifice as the means of atonement. Putting this together, the apostle asks if trusting in Christ's sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins nullifies God's law. Then he answers his question quite firmly: Not only does this faith not overthrow the law, it actually upholds or confirms it! Before explaining this line of thought, we must step back to consider Paul's whole song. The overriding theme of Romans 1—8 is the doctrine of justification by faith and how it applies to the Jew-Gentile divide that the early church struggled with. Chapters 9—11 then discuss the grafting of Gentiles into the Body of Christ and the current standing of physical Israelites. The final chapters discuss Christian conduct in light of the preceding doctrinal explanation. Justification by faith simply means that we are aligned with God—justified—based on our belief in Christ's sacrifice rather than any personal worthiness. At the time, many questioned this teaching because Gentiles were entering the church with little exposure to God's instructions. The church needed to understand that justification comes from believing in Christ's sacrifice, not from obeying God's commands, which Jewish believers had traditionally emphasized. So, the question was, “How is someone accepted by God?” which leads to, “How does that relationship start?” As a simple example, say a man tells a lie one day. The next day, though, the man does not lie or sin in any other way. In addition, he sells all he owns and gives the proceeds to charity. Yet the good he did the second day cannot pay for the whopper he told on the first. The wages for yesterday's work of the flesh must still be paid, and those wages are death (Romans 6:23). Neither perfect obedience nor charitable deeds after the fact can pay those wages. The account can only be settled with a life. So, either the sinner pays with his life, or he has faith in Christ's sacrifice as payment. Whether Jew or Gentile, we cannot approach the Father on the basis of our works because everyone falls critically and fatally short of His standard. Yet this truth does not abolish God's standards—it only means that our diligent efforts to live up to them will not justify us. In the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, the man who acknowledged his sinfulness and sought mercy was justified, not the one who held up his fasting and tithing to God as a self-serving offering (Luke 18:9-14). As necessary elements of God's instruction, fasting and tithing are good things, and Christ commands them in other places (for example, Matthew 6:16-18; 9:14-15; 23:23). But they cannot pay the debt that a person owes because of his sins. Whether in terms of obedience to the law or in charity, our works are simply our duty (see Luke 17:10), not the means of our justification. Being faithful to our spouse and honest with our neighbor will not justify or save us, yet we understand we are still obligated to keep those divine commands. They tell us the right way to live, and we see the significant benefit of keeping them and the tremendous harm from breaking them. Likewise, God never intended the fourth commandment to justify us, yet keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is still part of God's commandments. God has blessed, sanctified, and hallowed the seventh day since Creation, not merely from the giving of the law on Mount Sinai (Genesis 2:1-3; Exodus 20:11). The Sabbath is a necessary weekly reminder of God as Creator and Redeemer (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:15), both physically and spiritually and past and present/future. Exodus 31:13 shows it to be the sign of sanctification that is foundational to knowing God, as well as a day for being refreshed. The Sabbath is so vital to a relationship with God that He scattered ancient Israel primarily for breaking it (Ezekiel 20:12-13, 16, 20-21, 24; 22:8, 26). Jesus Christ's teaching and example clearly upheld the Sabbath. Aside from the first commandment, the fourth arose as a subject more often during His ministry than any other. He and the Jews never disagreed over whether the seventh-day Sabbath was holy; they only sparred over what was appropriate activity on it. The book of Acts shows the apostles and early church continued to keep the seventh day. Yet today's nominal Christianity largely disparages the Sabbath because the Roman Catholic Church presumed to sanctify Sunday to placate sun-worshipers within the Empire. Though Protestantism rejected many Catholic practices during the Reformation, it weakly nodded to papal authority to continue this pagan tradition of men. Its later theologians twisted the Scripture to justify retaining Sunday as its day of worship.
David C. Grabbe
How Does Faith Establish the Law? (Part Two)
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Romans 3:31
Considered in totality, Paul is in no way against God's law. However, he is very much against misapplying it, such as thinking we can approach the Father because we have never killed anyone or did not lie this week, etc. Instead, as he reasons, we must begin with the fact that we are sinners, and our best efforts can never justify us once we have transgressed. We can approach the Father only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Even so, that critical point does not mean the law is unnecessary. Indeed, the law is extremely valuable because it reveals where we are out of alignment with God so we can change course. Thus, God gives us His law as a lamp to our feet (see Psalm 119:105)—to teach us how to walk and live as He lives. Even if a man feels at peace with God in how he is living, it does not mean God has no controversy with him. Psalm 7:11 says, “God is angry with the wicked every day,” despite also sending rain and sun on the good/just and evil/unjust alike (Matthew 5:45). Psalm 50:21 describes how His silence can lead sinners to the assumption that He is on their side. Still, neither God's silence nor how a man feels are good indicators of what He thinks. Instead, His Word reveals what He thinks. Understanding the principle of justification by faith, we can work backward, step by step, and understand how faith confirms or upholds the law. The first step is that the faith Paul has in mind in Romans 3:31 is belief in Christ's sacrifice to pay for our sins. The second step is that, since there are sins that need to be atoned, a law—a definition of right and wrong—is still necessary. I John 3:4 teaches that sin is the transgression of the law, so a standard of conduct must exist to be transgressed. Such transgression triggers the death penalty and the sinner's need for a Redeemer. The conclusion, then, is that inherent within our belief that Christ's blood pays the death penalty is an acknowledgment that God's law has been broken. Rather than nullifying God's law through our belief, we implicitly confirm that God's law is still very much in effect and admit we still need to be saved from the death penalty when we break that law. If we have this faith, forgiveness is available when we repent, but repentance means turning from transgressing God's standards. In Romans 6:15, Paul is aghast at the thought of continuing in sin—of persisting in behaviors that activate the death penalty, which includes breaking the fourth commandment by not treating the seventh day as holy. Likewise, Jude 4 warns of those who turn God's grace into license, and Hebrews 10:26-27 contains a thunderous yet ignored declaration: “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.”
David C. Grabbe
How Does Faith Establish the Law? (Part Two)
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Romans 5:1
The death of Christ provided—once and for all—the sacrificial blood needed to atone, reconcile, or justify all repentant sinners to God. However, justification is a process that involves prior, current, and future applications to the sinner (Romans 8:33; 2:13; Galatians 5:4-5) and relates to the beginning of conversion, its continuation, and its culmination. Romans 5:1 uses an aorist passive participle to convey the act of justification, indicating an action being performed upon us by someone else (God). Because man continues to sin after his initial justification, to remain properly aligned or reconciled with God, he must continue to repent and overcome so that he might continue to be justified (Hebrews 2:1-3; 9:28; 10:26-27).
Martin G. Collins
Are You Justified?
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Galatians 3:8
The word scripture refers to the Old Testament. Paul writes in a way where the Scripture is personified ("foreseeing"), but the intent is clear that the Scripture is being spoken of in terms of the Author. The One who inspired the Old Testament (Scripture) foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles through faith. This means that the doctrine of justification by faith is contained in the Old Testament (Psalm 130:3, 143:2; Exodus 34:7; Job 4:17, 9:2-3,29, 15:14, 25:4; Ecclesiastes 7:20), and is not something contained just in the New—if not directly, then at least indirectly by showing that we cannot justify ourselves in God's eyes. (God foretells of this Gentile justification in Isaiah 49:6, 22-23, 60.) The phrase "would justify" is in the present indicative sense, which means that it is now, and at all times, God's one way of justification. Here it would better be translated as "justifies." God justifies through faith—He always has, and as long as the present order of things continues, He always will. There was never a time when a person could have been justified by their works or actions. Faith in Christ is the means by which God would justify the heathens ("the nations"—the Gentiles), but that justification does not mean they were allowed to remain Gentiles (heathens) in a spiritual sense. Being justified does not mean we are told we have not done anything wrong. Being justified means we are brought into legal alignment with God and His law, so the sin-induced gulf between God and man can be overcome and the relationship can begin. The physical Gentiles are/were given the opportunity to repent (Acts 11:18), which coincides with justification, but even repentance means that a change in behavior (works) must be made. God saves us from our sins, not in our sins.
David C. Grabbe
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Galatians 3:19
What is this law's purpose? Remember, the major subject in the book of Galatians is justification—right standing with God, being aligned with God, being declared righteous. In giving his answer, Paul says, "It was added because of transgressions," which parallels Jeremiah 7:22-23, where God Himself said, "I did not speak to you about sacrifices and offerings." In the book of Exodus, we can find that those rituals were added after the Old Covenant had been ratified. They were attached to it, like an appendix. The reason? "[B]ecause of transgressions," that is, because the Israelites continued to sin against God. They were breaking the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments. The apostle then tells us how long this added law was to last: "[U]ntil the Seed"— Christ—"should come." The law—the sacrificial ceremonial law that was added—had a purpose, which was to teach, to instruct, about sin and the payment for it. Unlike the Ten Commandments, it did not define sin, unless the sacrificial law itself was being broken, then it would have been a wrongdoing, a sin. Such a thing happened in the case of Aaron's sons when God struck them dead for using common fire (Leviticus 10). They died because they failed to follow God's rules about making an offering, and it became sin to them. At this point, it might be good to realize that Numbers 28 and 29 contain the national law of offerings God commanded. They had to be offered. They included the evening and morning sacrifices and all the sacrifices and offerings to be made on the first and last days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Eighth Day. These offerings were made at the Temple on behalf of—for the benefit of—the whole nation. It may surprise you to learn that the individual Israelite was never required to make any sacrifice at all except for the Passover lamb. God did not require the Israelites to give any of the sacrifices and offerings in the book of Leviticus. They were entirely voluntary. If an Israelite wanted to do them, he could, and it was good for him if he did, if he understood what he was doing. However, he did not have to do them; they were completely voluntary, which is why they do not define sin. They were not required by God. Even so—whether they were the national offerings made at the Tabernacle and Temple or the voluntary ones—they were to last only until the Seed, Jesus Christ, came.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Seventeen)
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