Romans 4:13-16

God does it. He justifies us. He does it freely. One of His purposes is that the promises may be sure.

The Jews have a saying that goes like this: "How can a man enter into a right relationship with God so that he, too, may inherit the promises?" They understood the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. They wanted to be able to participate in it and so they had this question. Here was their answer: "He must do so by acquiring merit in the sight of God through doing good works, which the law prescribes." That is to say, by one's own effort.

But you see, as Paul is describing here, that destroys the promises of God because no man can keep the law! If nobody can keep the law, because the giving of the promises depends on keeping the law—if they cannot keep it, if we cannot keep it, then God cannot give the promises, and nobody would ever qualify.

So God, wanting to make sure that the promises are given, justifies a person of His own free will (God does this.) He blesses us, so that we can qualify to receive the promises on the basis of His grace. You better be glad it is that way, or we would never inherit what Abraham is going to inherit.

Romans 4:15

Huh, that can sound a little strange. But if we consider the connection to one Lawgiver and all sins having the same penalty, it starts to make a little more sense. If we see that one is either holy or is not, there seems to be no middle ground when it comes to judgments. Human nature wants to put on degrees of judgment. I am not going to go into those details now. Yes, there are sins not leading to death but they are still judged as sins.

Paul said in Romans 4:15 that "where there is no law there is no transgression." But these are more rare than they once were. And for us, who have been given the Word of God, very rare. Those who seek the Kingdom of God and have had the revelations of God's Word given to them, those who seek to be perfect as He is perfect need to consider these things. I would add here, because we have been declared clean by the righteous blood and the reputation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we do this very day, we currently stand as a holy people that have been separated by God to Himself. We are presented before the Father by the justification and the works of Jesus Christ.

Romans 4:13-15

He is saying there is no way that we could be justified through law or any of that sort of thing. It does not work that way. That is not what the law is designed for. The law is designed to show us what sin is, show us what wrong conduct is, or you can flip it around more positively to say it shows us what good conduct is. But the Ten Commandments are famously in the negative. But that is its purpose. It is not to save us.