What Paul Cannot Mean (1) – The Law of God: Questions and Answers

What Paul Cannot Mean (1)
The Law of God: Questions and Answers

Did Paul reject the Law of God?

Question: What does Paul mean when he says that we’re not under Law but under grace?

Do we then overthrow the law by faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. Romans 3:31

Because I write and speak about the Law of God, always in a mode of encouraging greater diligence in studying and obeying it, I’m sometimes confronted by people who declare frankly that they are glad they’re “not under law, but under grace.”

My immediate response is always the same: Me, too.

Of course, such people have a different agenda in mind than what I am promoting and what I intend in my stock reply to their challenge. They are, of course, only quoting Paul in Romans 6:14: “You are not under law but under grace.” The question is not whether Paul is correct in asserting this. He is. The question is, rather, What does he mean?

And this is the question we will explore, beginning today.

Let’s start by considering what Paul cannot mean. Paul cannot mean that the Law of God has no place in the life of a believer. He cannot mean this in Romans 6:14 because, as we see above, he has already asserted in Romans 3:21 that we do not throw the Law of God overboard just because we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Then he emphasizes that assertion in two ways. First, by the phrase, “By no means!” Second, by insisting that not only do we not overthrow the Law but we “uphold” it. The word used here is a bit stronger than the ESV’s “uphold.” It means something more like “continue” or “establish.”

We are saved by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, not by the works of the Law, as many Jewish people in Jesus’ day supposed. So, with Paul, we reject the Law as a means of salvation. But just because we attain to saving faith apart from the Law, by grace through faith, does not mean that we throw the Law overboard. Rather, we continue the Law and establish it in its proper place and role in the life of faith. Precisely what that is we shall discover in subsequent installments.

I recall some years ago reading a respected evangelical theologian who, in one of his works, asked the question, What then is the Christian’s relationship to the Law? He answered that the Christian has no relationship to the Law. For the Christian, he continued, the Law is a dead and a useless thing.

Paul, however, insists that faith does not overthrow the Law but rather establishes it. So when Paul says that we are not under Law but under grace, he cannot mean, as some people might like him to mean, that Law has no place in the life of faith. It has a place; the Law is continued into and established within the life of following Jesus by grace through faith. Therefore it’s important for us to understand just what that place is.

Got a question about the Law of God? Write to T. M. at tmmoore@ailbe.org, and your answer might appear in this series of In the Gates columns.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.