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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Grace—Replaces the Law or Replaces Righteous Behavior?, #6
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. (Romans 3:31)
As long as our adamic nature is alive it is under the Law of Moses, especially under the Ten Commandments. The Law is as a household slave who brings us to Christ, meanwhile watching over us so we do not commit sin while we are becoming acquainted with Christ. It is our death and resurrection with the Lord Jesus that frees us legally from the Law of Moses.
If we remain alive in our old nature, and then attempt to "marry" the Lord Jesus, we are found to be an adulteress. For the Law of Moses has dominion over an individual as long as he remains alive in his adamic personality.
For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. (Romans 4:13)
Again, it is clear that Paul is contrasting faith with the Law of Moses, and he is speaking to Jews. He is not informing Gentiles, who at this time knew little about Abraham and his inheritance, that they no longer need to obey the eternal moral law of God.
The eternal moral law of God has been placed in our conscience.
The eternal law of God has been in existence from eternity—long, long before it was expressed in a negative form in the Ten Commandments. The eternal moral law of God will still be in effect tens of billions of years from now, if one can measure ageless eons in terms of time. The eternal moral law is the Nature of God.
The eternal moral law is, You shall love God with your whole personality and your neighbor as yourself.
For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: (Romans 4:14)
Again, to Jews concerning the Law of Moses.
Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. (Romans 4:15)
The Law of Moses.
(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. (Romans 5:13)
The Law of Moses.
Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: (Romans 5:20)
The Law of Moses.
The next chapter of Romans (Chapter Six) reveals beyond all possibility of doubt that Paul was not replacing righteousness with grace, faith, mercy, or any other legal maneuver. Rather, Paul was replacing the many varied aspects of the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath observance, circumcision, dietary laws, feast days, the laws governing leprosy, and so forth with obedience to Christ through the Spirit of God.
Obedience to Christ through the Spirit of God always produces moral transformation—moral transformation portrayed in increasingly righteous behavior.
Salvation is not a trip to Heaven. Salvation is moral transformation and increasingly righteous behavior. This is what salvation is.
To say we are saved by Divine grace apart from moral transformation is precisely equivalent to claiming we are healed apart from being healed.
To be continued.