the Third Week after Easter
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Romans 8:4
‘Fulfilled in us’
Read Galatians 3:1-13
The law of God is holy, just and good. We love the law and honor the law, as the revelation of God’s righteousness and justice. But we recognize the fact that fallen men can never fulfill the requirements of God’s holy law by their own works. ‘Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight’ (Romans 3:20). Yet we know also that until the law is perfectly fulfilled, no sinner can be saved. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die’ (Ezekiel 18:20). God will not lessen his requirements, or bend his law, even to save his own elect. The law must be fulfilled. Both its requirements of righteousness and justice must be satisfied. The only way fallen, sinful men can ever fulfill the law and be saved is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the sinner’s Substitute.
We fulfill the law’s purpose by faith. The law of God was our schoolmaster. Its one and only purpose was to bring us to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in him. Once we come to Christ, once we trust the Son of God, as our Lord and Savior, the law has nothing more to do with us. Its purpose has been served (Galatians 3:24-26).
By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we fulfill the law’s requirement of perfect righteousness. We have no righteousness of our own. But we trust the Lord Jesus who lived in righteousness as our Representative. And trusting him, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us (Romans 3:22; Romans 5:19).
And we fulfill the law’s demand that justice be satisfied by faith in Christ. Sin must be punished. The sentence of the law must be fully executed upon every transgressor. And it is done. Divine justice was fully satisfied for every believer by Christ, the sinner’s Substitute (Romans 8:1-4). Since Christ died, God is both just and the justifier of all who believe (Romans 3:24-26). Faith in Christ does not ignore the law, defile the law, lessen the law, or make the law void. Indeed, by faith ‘we establish the law’ (Romans 3:31).
