The Believer And The Law                       

Romans 7:9

            That person who knows the proper place of the law and the glory of God’s free grace, the person who can rest in Christ alone for all that the law requires and all that justice demands, knows the gospel. But that person who mixes law and grace, in any measure whatsoever, as a matter of acceptance before God, has not yet learned the gospel.

            There are no two things in the world more completely opposed to one another than law and grace. They are as opposite as light and darkness. They can no more agree than fire and water. Like oil and water, law and grace simply will not mix. The Scriptures are explicitly clear (Rom. 11:5-6).

            Yet, there is an amazingly well-established opinion in the distorted minds of men that law and grace will mix! Though law and grace are diametrically opposed to one another, the depraved human mind is so void of spiritual understanding and so thoroughly turned away from God that the most difficult thing for man to do is to discriminate between law and grace. Man insists on mixing that which God has positively put asunder. Because of his foolish ignorance, man wants to find some legal standing before God. This is the thing which Paul opposes throughout all of his epistles. He expends every effort to destroy every remnant of legalism among God’s people. Look one more time at the plain, obvious statements of Holy Scripture.

            "Ye are not under the law, but under grace...We are not under the law, but under grace?...Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God...For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit...For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom. 6:14-15; 7:4; 8:3-4; 10:4). "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster" (Gal. 3:24-25). "But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient " (1 Tim. 1:8-9).

            Does this mean that Paul was opposed to the law; or that he thought the law was an evil thing? Certainly not. In his seventh chapter of Romans, the apostle shows us the believer’s attitude toward God’s holy law. The true believer recognizes the purpose of the law; and he highly reverences the law. It is his desire to live in perfect compliance with the law. And recognizing the law’s perfection, he refuses to seek acceptance with God on the basis of legal obedience. The only way sinners can honor, fulfil, and establish the law is by faith in Christ (Rom. 3:31).

Don Fortner