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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Grace—Replaces the Law or Replaces Righteous Behavior?, #5
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: (Matthew 7:24)
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:21)
If we make Divine grace a replacement for righteous behavior we find ourselves contradicting not only the commandments of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels but also several strong statements by the Apostle Paul himself.
Let us now look at several passages in the Book of Romans that demonstrate clearly Paul was speaking to Jews and contrasting grace with the Law of Moses, not with righteous behavior.
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20)
"By the deeds of the law." We Gentiles of today look at this verse and perceive it to say that people are not justified by behaving righteously in the sight of God. This is not what the verse is stating.
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; (Romans 3:21)
Not the righteousness of God apart from our moral transformation but the righteousness of God apart from the Law of Moses.
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. (Romans 3:28)
One might say, Paul indeed was speaking of the Law of Moses but the same holds true of any moral code—we cannot be saved by any philosophy or moral code. Salvation can be found only in the Lord Jesus.
We cannot choose to behave righteously by our own moral code in place of receiving the Lord Jesus.
However, in stating that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law of Moses the Apostle Paul was not discounting the need for moral transformation, because that would clearly contradict all Paul said in the sixth chapter of Romans and in numerous other passages.
The Jews were pressing toward righteousness. Paul was informing them that now that God had given Christ for their sins they could not achieve righteousness by observing the Law of Moses. God has provided His own Lamb. To please God the Jew must look up from blind adherence to the Torah and receive Christ. In so doing the Jew is not losing his righteous status with God because God has seen fit to provide a righteousness apart from the Law.
Paul tells us in Chapter Seven of Romans that we are dead to the Law of Moses so that we may be married to Christ. Marriage to Christ is a moral discipline a thousandfold stricter than the Law of Moses.
To teach we are saved by grace instead of by works, meaning that how we behave is not an essential aspect of the new covenant, is, as Peter said, to wrest Paul's words to our own destruction.
As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (II Peter 3:16)
To be continued.