godlyPOV

The lesson library / Lesson 35

Law, grace, faith, and works

Distinguish the ground, means, fruit, and standard of salvation so that grace and obedience are not treated as enemies.

Holiness and the life of faith

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Romans 4:1-25 · Romans 6:1-23 · Hebrews 10:1-25 · Acts 15:1-29

Several different questions are often compressed into one argument. What earns acceptance? How is Christ received? What follows conversion? What defines good conduct? If those questions are not distinguished, one person’s defense of grace can sound like permission to sin, and another person’s defense of obedience can sound like a plan for earning salvation. The Bible supplies distinctions that make both errors unnecessary.

Read Romans 4:1-12

1 What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather, has found according to the flesh?
2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not toward God.
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
4 Now to him who works, the reward is not counted as grace, but as something owed.
5 But to him who doesn’t work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
6 Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin.”
9 Is this blessing then pronounced only on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.
10 How then was it counted? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
11 He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they might be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might also be accounted to them.
12 He is the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had in uncircumcision.

Paul’s wage comparison establishes the issue. God does not owe justification because the sinner has completed enough obligations. That applies to Sabbath observance, dietary practice, generosity, or anything else a person might place on the account. The fact that an act is commanded does not make it capable of canceling guilt. The believer receives Christ through faith and then obeys as someone who belongs to Him. The order determines whether obedience is gratitude or an attempted purchase.

Read Romans 6:1-14

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him,
9 knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him!
10 For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
11 Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13 Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

Paul asks whether grace provides a reason to continue in sin and rejects the proposal. That is the problem with antinomianism: it treats release from condemnation as though it were release from the Lord’s moral authority. A person who has been set free from sin should not describe renewed slavery as Christian liberty. Yet the obedience itself does not become a replacement ground of acceptance. It expresses the new relationship that grace establishes.

Read Hebrews 10:1-18

1 For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near.
2 Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins?
3 But in those sacrifices there is a yearly reminder of sins.
4 For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
5 Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, “You didn’t desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me.
6 You had no pleasure in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.’ ”
8 Previously saying, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you didn’t desire, neither had pleasure in them” (those which are offered according to the law),
9 then he has said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,
10 by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins,
12 but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God,
13 from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet.
14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,” says the Lord, “I will put my laws on their heart, I will also write them on their mind;” then he says,
17 “I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more.”
18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

The whole Old Testament cannot be applied as though Christ had not come. Hebrews explicitly explains changes concerning sacrifice and priesthood. That is not contempt for Moses; it is attention to what Moses’ institutions anticipated. Conversely, those changes do not establish that every moral command has expired. The task is to identify what a command addresses, how later Scripture treats it, and how Christ’s work affects its application. A single slogan about all law or no law does not perform that work.

Read Acts 15:6-21

6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to see about this matter.
7 When there had been much discussion, Peter rose up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that a good while ago God made a choice among you that by my mouth the nations should hear the word of the Good News and believe.
8 God, who knows the heart, testified about them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just like he did to us.
9 He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.
10 Now therefore why do you tempt God, that you should put a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
11 But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.”
12 All the multitude kept silence, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul reporting what signs and wonders God had done among the nations through them.
13 After they were silent, James answered, “Brothers, listen to me.
14 Simeon has reported how God first visited the nations to take out of them a people for his name.
15 This agrees with the words of the prophets. As it is written,
16 ‘After these things I will return. I will again build the tabernacle of David, which has fallen. I will again build its ruins. I will set it up
17 that the rest of men may seek after the Lord: all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who does all these things.’
18 “All of God’s works are known to him from eternity.
19 Therefore my judgment is that we don’t trouble those from among the Gentiles who turn to God,
20 but that we write to them that they abstain from the pollution of idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood.
21 For Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”

The council rejects the demand that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep Moses’ law to be saved. Its short list cannot be an exhaustive Christian ethic; murder and theft are not thereby permitted. Food passages also require context. Peter himself explains his vision in relation to people, while many Christians understand it to have dietary implications as well. This course retains the biblical clean-food distinctions, but that position must engage the alternative readings honestly. It must never turn dietary practice into a second means of justification.

Put the terms in their proper places. Christ supplies the ground of acceptance; faith receives Him; good works follow as fruit; God’s word directs the life. That arrangement leaves no room to boast in obedience and no room to despise it. Grace restores allegiance to the Lord whose authority sin had rejected.

Consider your perspective

The relationship between law and grace becomes clearer when we distinguish the ground of acceptance from the conduct grace produces. Convictions about Sabbath or food can guide obedience without being turned into an alternative gospel.

Put it into practice

When explaining an observance, state both its biblical basis and its place in your life. Make clear that trust in Christ, rather than successful observance, is the ground of your confidence before God.

Reflect and respond

  • Which question concerns acceptance, and which concerns conduct?
  • How does fulfillment differ from neglect?
  • Can you defend an observance without making it a price of salvation?

Passages and further study

Scripture quotations are from the public-domain World English Bible (WEB). Historical confessions are study aids, subordinate to Scripture. This independent lesson is not an official denominational statement.

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