The Law and Faith

God is smarter than me. Now, before you start feeling smug, God is smarter than you also. God knows how to bring together and balance things that should not go together based on human logic and understanding.

Things like:

Grace and Justice

God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will

Love and Judgment

And in Galatians 3:23-29 Paul shares the purpose of law and faith and how they relate to each other.

Galatians 3:23

Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.

The law was narrow and restrictive. The law gave little or no wiggle room. The “you shall not” of the law is direct and clear. The law recognizes the sinfulness of humans and the inability of humans to naturally obey God and follow His standards.

Law is based on obedience.

Faith is based on grace.

Faith is revealed through Jesus.

In John 1:14 we are told that when Jesus came, He was full of grace and truth. Then in John 1:17 we are told that the law came from Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus.

Faith being based on grace means that when I place my faith in Jesus, His grace gives me the gift of Jesus’ obedience to the law. I have not measured up to God’s standard in obeying the law. Grace allows God to see not my disobedience to the law but Jesus’ obedience to the law, and He applies that obedience to me.   

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living based on faith, not the law.

Galatians 3:24

So, the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.

The purpose of the law was not salvation. The only way for the law to save us was for us to perfectly obey the law 100% of the time. In other words, we have to be perfect.

The purpose of the law was to lead us to Christ so that, by faith in Him, we would be justified by faith.

Justification by the law could only come about based on our ability to obey all the law.

Justification by faith comes about through the finished work of Jesus on the cross.

Justification by the law is impossible.

Justification by faith is available to all.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is justification by grace through faith.

Galatians 3:25

Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

Before the modern system of education came to be the norm, many occupations were learned through apprenticeship. The person entered a certain trade and worked under the supervision of someone who was a master at that particular trade.

Paul says that the law was given to us to supervise or guide us into faith in Jesus. The law gave us the standards of God and helped us to see the reality that we cannot keep the law. The truth reveals to us that we cannot keep the law but must depend on Jesus’ fulfilment of the law.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is depending on Jesus’ complete sufficiency.

Galatians 3:26-27

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Three things are true of followers of Jesus:

We are sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus.

We have been baptized in and buried with Jesus.

We are clothed with Jesus.

As followers of Jesus, we have died and been resurrected by God, which makes us His sons and daughters who now have Jesus with us all the time. 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is dying to self and resurrecting in Jesus to be God’s children.

Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Faith in Jesus means that salvation is available to people regardless of:

Nationality

Social Standing

Gender

The world judges people by all of those distinctions but according to 1 Samuel 16:7 God judges by what our heart is like. God does not care where you are from, what you look like, what kind of education you have, or how much wealth you have. God cares if you have a desire to know Him.

When you surrender your life to Jesus, He makes you one with the others who are following Him.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is putting aside worldly distinctions and seeing yourself as being in God’s family with a lot of brothers and sisters.

Galatians 3:29

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Faith makes you a faith-descant of Abraham. According to Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham believed what God promised him and God declared him righteous based on his faith in God and His promises.

Faith in Jesus makes me righteous.

Faith makes me an heir according to the promise.

Faith means that the promises of God now apply to me.

We have a choice: law or faith.

Depending on the law leads us to lostness and restrictions and supervision.

Depending on faith leads to salvation and freedom.

In and By Faith Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe