Christ… Paul… And The Fulfillment Of God’s Law

It’s Always Been Unlawful To Use The Law Unlawfully

This is probably the single most misunderstood aspect of the bible today. It needs more work and more study. Think about this: The bible clearly states that it’s unlawful to use the law unlawfully. You’ll find this in 1 Timothy 1:8. Yep, to use the law as a means of personal merit and justification is a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.

This is made clear in the gracious prologue to the Ten Commandments, where God declares, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” The law was given not as a ladder to earn salvation, but as a response to God’s prior act of deliverance.

Old Testament passages such as Psalm 130:3, Psalm 143:2, Psalm 30:2 and 10, and Habakkuk 2:4 make it evident that justification was never achieved through the works of the law. Instead, righteousness was imputed by faith… just as it is today.

The Old Testament Testifies To The Need For Atonement

The entire Old Testament system, including its sacrificial practices and ceremonial cleansing rites, pointed toward the need for divine atonement. These rituals were visible signs that no one could be made right with God through personal effort or external conformity. They testified instead to the necessity of God’s provision for sin. This should have served as a clear witness to the Judaizers and Pharisees that justification comes not by law-keeping, but through faith in the atoning work that God alone provides.

I hope you can see that I’m not a legalist, so please, keep reading.

My initial premise would be that we cannot simply select fragments of Jesus’s moral teaching while ignoring the whole biblical witness about the law. I would remind readers that Jesus did not abolish the law but fulfilled it and that the New Testament understanding of marriage, family, state, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit rests in part on this crucial insight.

Almost all modern writings reflect confusion about how Jesus and Paul regarded the law, prompting the call for a more profound and intellectually stimulating re-examination of its meaning and place in Christian life. Paul’s letters, in particular, shed light on what the law truly is, how it relates to human sin, and how it is forever connected to the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The Law As God’s Law

In Paul’s view, the Old Testament law is not just a set of human rules… it is God’s own law, holy, righteous, and good. It was “given” as a divine gift, meant not to burden his people, but to reveal God’s will in concrete form and, thereby, bless Israel and eventually all the nations. Such a high view of the law underlies Paul’s repeated references to the Old Testament as genuine divine authority.

The law was intended for life, even if human sin became the occasion for condemnation and death. Yet Paul doesn’t disparage this law itself. If he speaks of being “free” from it or of Christ “ending” it, he does so with nuances that confirm, rather than cancel, the law’s profound holiness.

The Law and the Revelation of Sin

The law shows us sin for what it is. Even before Moses, sin was obviously present in the world. The explicit commandments given at Sinai exposed human rebellion in greater clarity. When the law says “do not,” and we persist in wrongdoing, our sin becomes deliberate disobedience toward God.

Paradoxically, this unveiling of sin can provoke humans to further sin. Our self-centered hearts resist divine authority, and when the law confronts us, it can ignite our rebellious desires. Paul describes how the law, though entirely good, becomes a catalyst for sinful acts because it meets human stubbornness. It also fosters legalism, that effort to place God in our debt by fulfilling His commands on our own terms… an effort Paul says is doomed to fail.

Christ as the Goal and Fulfillment

Despite these human perversions of the law, Paul insists that the law itself ultimately points to Christ. He calls Jesus the “goal” of the law, arguing that the Old Testament ceremonies, moral commandments, and promises lead forward to the Messiah. Christ alone has fully obeyed the law’s demands in a spirit of perfect love for God and neighbor. Where sinful humanity twists the law, Jesus embodies its true heart.

Moreover, the law’s sacrificial rites, from the Passover lamb to the Day of Atonement, foreshadow the cross, in which Christ takes on the curse and condemnation sin brings. By doing so, He does not discard the law but unveils its deepest intent… to bring life and salvation.

Rejecting Legalism

Paul repeatedly warns against identifying the law with legalistic religion. Legalism, a term used to describe a belief system that emphasizes strict adherence to the law as a means of earning salvation. This suggests that by external obedience, one can earn divine favor. But such an attitude corrupts the law and enslaves people to fear and pride.

When the apostle says we are no longer “under the law,” he is saying that we are no longer indicted by it and condemned by it, nor are we compelled to distort it into an endless cycle of works-righteousness. He writes passionately against those who would require Gentile Christians to undergo Jewish rituals and ceremonial rules as if these alone secured a righteous status before God.

For Paul, that approach tears believers away from Christ, who alone is the law’s substance. The cross frees us from the law’s curse but not from the presence of the law in God’s plan.

The Law Was Not Abolished But Re-Established

Though Paul often appears to speak of the law in a negative way, closer reading clarifies that he condemns the misuse or “bare letter” of the law stripped of its true focus on Christ. When he says, for example, that Christ is the end of the law, he means that Christ, as a sacrificial atonement, is the law’s climax and fulfillment, not the termination of God’s moral requirements.

In passages where he writes of dying to the law, he means dying to its condemnation and dying to the legalistic distortion that tries to earn merit apart from grace. Paul’s strong language can only be confusing if read without noticing his distinctions between the law’s divine goodness and human perversions, such as using the law as a means of self-righteousness.

The most compelling evidence of Paul’s high regard for the law lies in his teaching about the Spirit. The true purpose of the law, as he says in Romans, is “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Far from canceling the law, Christ’s saving death and resurrection enable the Holy Spirit to write that law on believers’ hearts, a wholly spiritual transformation. Where once the law spelled condemnation and stirred our sinful impulses, it now becomes, through the Spirit, the “law of liberty” and guide to a genuine love of our neighbors.

One Word Of God

I’m simply suggesting that Christ’s teaching on morals cannot be lifted out of its Old Testament context. For Paul, the whole revelation… law and prophets, culminating in Christ… forms a single gracious word of God. The law is not one failed experiment replaced by the gospel. Rather, it is part of the one divine plan. Different sides of the same coin.

Human sin created confusion, legalism, and condemnation. Jesus and the gift of the Spirit is present to restore the law to its original purpose. God’s commandments, in this way, are not harsh demands but the shape of redeemed life. The “newness” of Christ lies not in discarding the law but in fulfilling it so that we are at last free to love God and our neighbor in the power of the Spirit as the law requires.

This integrated view, in which law and gospel converge, is vital for understanding Christian ethics. If we treat the moral law as abolished, we risk emotionalism, sentimentality and self-deception. We impose the laws of logic on the laws of God, saying “what my net doesn’t catch aren’t fish.” If I don’t like or can’t understand God’s law completely or exhaustively, then I am not bound by it. (C. S. Lewis was famous for doing this.)

If we use God’s law to justify the ultimate measure of our worthiness, we then stand under its own condemnation. Only by seeing Christ as the heart of the law… and by receiving the Spirit… can we honor the commandments rightly.

This is the perspective that Paul’s letters invite us to rediscover, and it addresses today’s confusion by restoring us to the full biblical vision of God’s holy demands and gracious promises, all joined in Jesus Christ. Until we get this back, our country will wander in the wilderness, irrespective of who is President or in Congress.

Source: https://www.offthegridnews.com/religion/christ-paul-and-the-fulfillment-of-gods-law/