Verse 31 is the most difficult and the most debated verse of our text, so we'll key from that point in this conclusion to our study of Romans chapter 3. The issue is, the situation is, the question is, how on earth does the gospel uphold the law? That's the root problem here. And many assume, even today, that the gospel and the law are enemies. But only a false gospel supports that attitude. So it's very important that we understand what Paul is saying here, what he is teaching and what he is not teaching. So Paul anticipates the question of the Jews, either around or perhaps inside the Roman church, They would respond to what he has stated so far about the gospel given their previous assumptions. And so he anticipates the question and poses it rhetorically. Do we then nullify the law through faith? Do we nullify the law through faith? That's a question that every one of us needs to be able to answer in order to be square with God ourselves and in order to be able to explain this gospel that we hold as very dear. In the framework of the context here, we see a play of sorts on words with the Greek word nomos, or law. The rhetorical question is asking, in a sense, do we then nullify the law of God by establishing the certainty of a law In other words, are we substituting a different law for the law of the one true God? This line of logic depends very much, we saw last week, on the critical issue of the one true God. He's all there is. Every Jew will affirm that. It's very important to the core of Paul's argument that he wins this argument at exactly that point. There's only one God, so that's the starting place of our logic. So he's saying, I have established a law of faith, have I unraveled the law of God by doing that? Verse 28. And that is, of course, what the Jews would impulsively feel due to their misunderstanding of their own Scripture. They would feel that that is exactly what is done. They would believe that any law of salvation by faith would be destructive and dismissive and oppositional. to the law of the one true God. There's one God and He only has one law. And His law is not controverted. It is not contradictory. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If He ever thought a thing, He still does. If it was ever wrong, it still is. If it was ever right, it still is. He does not change. The Jews believe all that true doctrine. So is Paul doing violence to that doctrine? He says, no, that's exactly my strongest point. I'm telling you, this is how that same God with that same law has decided to save His people in this one way of the gospel. So Paul emphatically declares that such is not at all the case. May it never be, he exclaims. Perish that thought. Don't even think such a thing. We would never could never nullify the law of the only God there is. You couldn't do that. Nobody could do that. In fact, he has said, the law witnesses, bears testimony of the gospel that we're talking about. And the two are in fact inseparable provisions of the same one God. And in fact, the supremacy of logic is on the side of the gospel, not on the side of the Jewish occupiers of the traditions of the law. So he says, we would never nullify the law of God. We are simply clarifying that no one can become righteous before God by the works of the law. No one can be justified by the works of the law. Despite the fact that the law is holy and righteous, is the handbook of righteousness, is goodness itself. It cannot make you righteous. Only God can make you righteous and He has not decided to do it by law keeping. God in His grace and mercy has rather provided His righteousness apart from the law. as we see in this text. So that the truth is that a person is justified, verse 28, apart from any works of the law, and in fact, by this declaration of truth, we are, Paul says, establishing the law. We are the ones, the believers, who are properly upholding the law, reverencing the law, honoring the law. It's very important that we understand how that is true, and it is very important that it be true. There could be no disparity here because the center of this text is the emphasis on there's only one God, so however anyone gets saved, it would have to be by the same one way. And he can't be schizophrenic, he can't be convoluted, he cannot be one who's changing his mind and his plan all the time. In fact, it's important to his reputation, he said, I don't change at all. You can bet on that, that's the bedrock. In Exodus chapter 40, this is right in the core of the Jewish oracles. Exodus chapter 40, at the very beginning of the law's application. Of course, Exodus is the story of the people of Israel being called out of Egypt and being established in a system of worship, a framework of obedience to God's law. Verse 20, it says, The testimony of the Law was placed inside the Ark of the Covenant, and then the Golden Mercy Seat was placed on the Ark as its lid. These two belong together in proper function, and this has always been the case. It's the Jews that have forgotten that, not the Christians. That's always been the case. It still is the case. Because Jesus is now, we have seen, our living, breathing, abiding mercy seat. Jesus Himself justly upholds and establishes and fulfills the law of God. How on earth could His gospel, His message, His kingdom not do so likewise? That's impossible to contemplate. But of course the Jews have voted against their own mercy seat. There used to be two statues of two cherubims over that mercy seat. Now there's a living, breathing person who identifies personally with his people, and they voted to kill him. They have the convoluted view of the law, not Paul and the doctrines of the gospel. So the Jews' first assumption is wrong. Their historical assumption is wrong. Their traditions are in serious error. And in fact, they are dishonoring the law, as Paul has already said. They break it while they say they keep it. They're the ones that have a view of God that evidently assumes that He can't know everything, or doesn't see everything, or doesn't keep His Word. They live that way. They pervert their own oracles, twist their own history. You can read their mail and make Paul's points, while true believers establish their history. and their oracles and their law. In our day, antinomians, those who are against law, nomos is the Greek word for law, and you know what anti means, anti-law. In our day, anti-law people and the so-called grace-only movement has it wrong just as well as the Jews did. while true believers are actually honoring and respecting God's law properly just as their Lord did. So Paul adamantly insists we are not abolishing the law. Jesus fulfilled the law. We are simply refusing to improperly use the law. We are refusing to illegitimately apply the law. Paul has said, verse 20, By the law comes the knowledge of sin. That should be no secret to anyone who knows the law. And by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in God's sight. So you right away have a problem. By the law comes the knowledge of sin, but by the law does not come the remedy for sin. That's why you had the testimony and you had a mercy seat, because you needed it. That's why sentences in the very law itself say such impossible things as, God will not forgive sins and God will forgive sins. How can the Jews explain the Nexigitos verses if not for the law and the mercy seat? And the justification of that God is going to do that. A person who is a sinner as a state of being, you see, a person who is a sinner as a state of being, and that's all every person is by natural birth, That person cannot possibly become a righteous person as a state of being by any amount of law-keeping. You can go along your life, going your merry way, doing as seems right in your own eyes, and someday pick up a copy of God's law and say, oh, there's ten things. I'll try this one today. I've been breaking out. I think I'll be better than that today. Can you possibly imagine that that transforms you into a new person? in complete ignorance of the fact that you'll keep on breaking the other nine with impunity. Keep on defying all the statutes and all the ordinances and all the commentary on those Ten Commandments. You don't agree with them at all. What kind of foolishness would let a person assume that by my arbitrary approach to God's holy law, from this fierce God that I ought to be scared to death of, that I'm going to be judged by this law, but I'll go ahead and keep two or three of them and I'll be a better person therefore, and I won't have anything to worry about before God's judgment. Only a fool would have such a blathe attitude if they understood the half of what they were dealing with when they encountered the law of God. A wicked person keeping righteous laws only makes a hypocrite, not a saint. Such actions could never square with law-breaking. could never compare. Good deeds can never outweigh bad deeds to the God who sees and knows everything, and He who offends at one single point of the law is guilty of all of it, all of its weight. You can't undo that by just trying to do better tomorrow, no matter how sincere you are, no matter how well disciplined you are. Such actions, no matter how successful they may seem to be, could never change a state of being, could never change a life. Thus Jesus said, you've got to be born again, period. You must be born again. Nothing else can happen apart from that. The law doesn't provide regeneration. The law provides information. The law could inform such a state of being of the futility of their actions if they were committed to truth. The law could contribute to heartfelt conviction of what the truth actually is and what that person's true situation is. The law could disturb you extremely powerfully, could disrupt your life and cast you into a state of anxiety, could show you your need for mercy, could remind you that while the testimony was inside the law, the mercy seat was over the law. The law could show you that you've got to somehow be justified or you'll never make it before God. But the law can't cause that change. More good news is needed. The gospel is needed. Power is needed. Change is needed. But perverting and adjusting the Word of God, the law of God, into saying something it doesn't say and doing something it doesn't do is not going to help you at all. It's going to make it worse. That doesn't honor the law, and it certainly does not honor the God whose law it is. Quite the contrary, it opposes God. It rebels against God. It does violence to His law. It does injustice to His law. And in fact, as we said, The long-run outcome of such religion was that the personified mercy speak was killed. He was intolerable to the Jewish nation with this view of God's law. And he's intolerable in our day to many folks who use his name and occupy his religion. And they don't understand how the law and the gospel are inseparable. You must get them right, but you can't spurn or despise the law. The real good news is trumpeted here in verse 21. Now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed as a freely given gift by the work of Christ, paid for entirely by the work of Christ. The real issue here, the issue in the Jewish context to which Paul writes and the issue in our day, is self-righteousness versus God's righteousness. people conspiring to make themselves righteous, climbing in some other way, or God making people righteous by giving them His righteousness in the prescribed way of the gospel. How do you tell the difference? It's very important to know the difference. The difference in self-righteousness and God's righteousness. One difference between the two is this. Your self-righteousness excludes everybody else. It has to. It has to, because you will tell on each other. You will reveal each other's hypocrisy. You see, if you love three of the laws and someone else loves three different ones, you'll have to prosecute each other all the time and lie better and better to each other so you still look righteous, so you can manage the little system you've set up. Self-righteousness excludes other people, even if they love Jesus. Even if they belong to Jesus, even if He paid for their sins, it doesn't matter. You exclude them because they're unfit for you in your vain delusions. And actually, the operating false notion in self-righteousness of all its systems is that you're actually God yourself because you're going to do whatever you want. You just like to be able to quote God arbitrarily. But God's righteousness has quite a different effect in a person's life. God's righteousness, freely given by His grace through the work of Christ in the gospel by faith, includes all others who love Jesus and belong to Him. And this is John's entire point when he writes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. It's part of how you know. When God gives a person righteousness, when God makes a person righteous and pays for it by the blood of Christ, the outcome is a whole lot different. That person includes all others who love Jesus and belong to Him because He paid for their sin exactly the same way He paid for your sin. And so since He freely gave grace and forgiveness at His expense, so do you. So this is the million dollar question of theology. So which righteousness do you have? The one you practice is the one you have. The one you think impulsively in your heart is the one you have. The one your attitude is, is the one you have. If Jesus forgave a person's sin, what's the big deal about you forgiving? And what exactly did you pay on it? Except to prove your own identity. That's the opportunity we have. So that's the issue here. That's the age-long issue. of false gospel versus true gospel, of true law versus false law. The law cannot make us right with God, can't change that heart of ours and get us off the throne of our imaginations. It can only show if we are or are not right with the one God there is. We can only get right with God by faith in His work through Christ. apart from the vain and futile and proud efforts of the old, natural, egotistical self, which would presume to satisfy God's holy requirement by arbitrarily and occasionally keeping His law, which is all any legalist ever does, and then using His law falsely or as a false pretense for righteousness. Paul talks about the quote-unquote righteousness he had back when he lived like that. I think we talked about that when we studied the book of Acts. Don't confuse those kind of sentences with what he's teaching here. Paul is not swinging the pendulum away from the law. He is disallowing the false use of the law in what has become a false religion. He's disallowing the law being used as it was never intended to be used by religious frauds and hypocrites who have nationally committed the unpardonable sin. That's what he's attacking. He is not saying that the law's statements have no authority. Perish that thought. He's not saying that the law's statements may be unilaterally ignored, that you may mock and scorn at them. He's not saying that. He's not promoting lawlessness. He's merely refuting the futility and the dishonesty of religious fiction. which promotes carnal self in the old nature and says that's good enough. You don't really need what Jesus said. You don't really need a new nature. You don't really need to be justified. You're okay as you are if you just try harder and do better. Paul's insisting that an unconverted person keeping the law is being incongruous to truth as well as ludicrous, and that person is being falsely proud and vain and egotistical and arrogant. So justification by faith establishes the law, upholds the law, honors the law, respects the law of God. Justification by faith, we could just as well say righteousness by faith, which is what is going on. That's the whole sentence here on the board. Righteousness by faith does not knock the law down and stomp on it. Rather, it stands the law up and cleans it up for its proper respect and service. The gospel upholds the law because every sinner who comes to Christ in truth comes confessing his guilt before that law, acknowledging the justice of his or her condemnation by that law, and comes looking to the mercy seat of Jesus Christ alone for hope. Not to compromise the truth, but to satisfy the truth. Not to lie about what is true, but to meet the requirements of what is true. Only by grace. Only by Christ. Secondly, the very death of Christ upholds the justice of the law. He didn't ignore the law. He was found righteous by the law. The only man in history that ever was. But when he took on himself our sins, there's another problem. Now the law killed him justly, and he submitted to that. He upholds the justice of the law. His shed blood is, by the law's requirement, satisfactory payment for our sin before God's justice. His sacrifice satisfies the law's justice and puts an end to all other sacrifices. And, in fact, puts an end to all other high priestly efforts. He's our high priest. We don't need another one. Thirdly, converted sinners uphold the law's justice further by recognizing that just satisfaction of the law's requirements must be made for them, and Jesus legally paid that satisfaction. They recognize that justice must be made for their sins, and Jesus paid for that justice. And the truth of that point, of verse 31, is primarily demonstrated in that converted sinner's life as sanctification ensues following justification. Because if a person gets right with God by faith alone, then they begin living by faith alone as their entire life, we have already seen, is now said to be from faith to more faith. And so, as people now already justified, they are the only people who can love and pursue and obey the Word of God, because they are now doing that by faith, which is expressing itself through love, which Paul says is the only thing that really counts. This is because they have been changed from the inside out. They haven't changed themselves. God has changed them. They've been born again, and they've been justified. They now love God. They love His Word. They love His will. They love His people. His wish is their command, and more than that, His wish is their joy and the delight of their existence. And so they're living in His fellowship. And John says in his epistle, if we walk in fellowship together, that should mean we're walking in fellowship with God, because that's all of our direct connection. We're living in His fellowship. So we're the only people who actually and truly love the very things that the eternal law of God promotes and requires. The production of the mind of God is the delight of our heart. Now, that's the beneficiary of a miracle, if that's true of you. If you got to be that way, then you got there by the new birth and you got there by the justification that Jesus did for you. And you received it only by faith, not by any works. These things have now been established as the root of your life, and that explains the fruit of your life. So you're not being hypocritical. You're being hypocritical when you slip up and fall back into sin. That's when you're being hypocrite. These are now the fruits of your life, the things that God's mind wants. and loves and prioritizes and requires the things He explained to the Israelites in the Law are now the delight of your heart, not as works of merit, but simply as the obedience of faith, as the fruit of faith, as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as fruit of the good tree you now are. So you are the one establishing the Law. You are the one properly respecting and honoring and upholding the Law. Fruit is real and true to the root, always. That was the baseline of what Jesus taught. Fruit is true to what you are. That's why a carnal, old-natured person keeping the Law is nothing but a hypocrite, nothing but dishonest. Working and striving out of character, pretending to be what you are not, even if you're using the Law of God to inform your pretension, is nothing but vanity and futility and hypocrisy. In fact, it is evil. An evil person obeying the law does not change the evil person at all. It only makes him more evil, more dishonest, more hypocritical, more false. So be very careful of teaching the points of the gospel and the points of God's righteousness to sinners who are still in sin. It would do them no good to copy them. In fact, it would harm them. It hides them from truth. They need to experience the full weight and consequence of the way they're living. They need to encounter God's law and be tuned up and informed and tuned in to it. And then see the magnificence of what Christ has done for them. If you help them pretend to be better than they are, they'll think they're better than they are. And then the gospel falls on hard hearts and deaf ears. So the entire issue is whether the doctrine of justification by faith alone produces obedient, God-loving people, or does it produce disobedient, lawless people? Which is it? It can't be both. Does the gospel produce lawless people who say they are saved by Jesus according to a raw academic belief alone, an intellectual agreement they have made? Paul emphasizes, both at the beginning of this letter and at the end of it, the obedience of faith. The obedience of faith, which is not works for merit, not works for salvation, it's the result of salvation. It's the result of a transformed person now encountering God's law. after having been born again and after having been justified. That's quite different from the arbitrary, occasional, hypocritical obedience that's construed into a religion of self-worship and self-righteousness. Entirely different. And we're going to see how different that is as we go on through this book of Romans. And I hope you're taking the time to read ahead occasionally. I always square the immediate context with the greater context of where we've been and where we're going. Paul reveals in chapters 6-8, and then in chapter 12 to the end, and even in the middle chapters, you'll find it, that justification God's way with the new birth is the only thing that produces faithful people who are commandable by the Word of God. Faithful people who are responsible and responsive to God's Word. Justification and new birth is the only thing that produces people who uphold God's law and love God's will. We've said before, I think the antidote to antinomianism is the power of a new life and the power of forgiven sin. The only sin you can have any power over is a forgiven sin. The knowledge that God must be and is justified in saving a person refutes that person's lawlessness, forbids it. The power of a regenerate, born-again life with a new nature and with the indwelling Spirit of God Himself includes, we saw in John's writing, includes the right and the power and the authority to proceed as a child of God. who behaves in accordance with the image of God and the Word of God. So lawlessness and lawbreaking and sinning against the law is denied by the new birth. The new nature has no attitude for those things. No interest in those things of sin. Justification denies. lawlessness and lawbreaking and sinning of each true believer, because we know how sin was paid for. We know how forgiveness was obtained. We know how our mercy was justified. And we uphold the law. We establish the law. We honor the law in that truth. We will see this mandatory assumption and emphasis as a byproduct of justification and new birth when we get to chapter 6. That's where it will be most classically clear, I think. In fact, if you thumb ahead to chapter 6, the rhetorical question with which Paul opens chapter 6 is remarkably akin to the rhetorical question in our immediate text. It's entirely akin philosophically to the question here in verse 31. In chapter 6, he says, well, what shall we say then, having argued what we argued in chapter 4 and 5? What should we say next? Are we to continue in sin so grace may abound because he's going to promote grace to be so wonderful? Well, are we saying we can continue in sin so grace can abound? And Paul's reply will be the same exact emphatic, may it never be, as you see in our text. In other words, if you're studying the gospel and that's what you think, you've got it wrong. That is exactly akin to the hypocritical attitude of the Jewish religion that sin really doesn't matter too much because more sacrifices can always be made. The writer of Hebrews clearly refutes and warns that attitude, saying, well, you better understand what one final sacrifice has now been made, and you'd better not have that attitude about it. That's intolerable with the new birth and with justification. The doctrine of justification by faith, we'll see in chapter 6, does not declare that sinning doesn't matter, does not teach that the more we sin, the more God is glorified, because He likes to forgive us, and that's what He wants to do. It doesn't mean that anymore than it means that we're rendering the law of God void. And Paul's logic in chapter 6 will be exactly as clear as it is in chapter 3, verses 14 and 15 of chapter 6, where he says that since you are not under law, but under grace, the direct result is that in this way alone sin shall not be mastered over you any longer. Is that the conclusion you get when you contemplate grace? It must be, or we're getting it wrong. Sin shall not be master over you any longer. That's what it means to be under grace and not under law. That is a powerful result of the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation from sin. The gospel of justification by faith does not cause or produce lawlessness or more sinning. Exactly the opposite, in fact. It produces a love for God who provided a justified release from sin and a forgiveness of sin in the work of Christ. So the result of the power and grace of God controlling a person's life does not at all nullify the law, nor does it promote sin. The gospel is death to sin. If the gospel you hold is not death to sin, you've got the wrong one. Because the gospel of Jesus Christ is death to sin. It's the death sentence of sin. It is the condemnation of sin. And it establishes and upholds the law of God in Romans chapter 8. We see this same line of continuing logic. Verses 2 to 4. The law. Here's another play on words, just as in our text. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. Because what the law could not do, being weak through the flesh, let's pause and explain that in the middle of that sentence. The law could not do because it is weak in the flesh. The law simply cannot be a document of peace between God and a fallen, sinful person. That is impossible to imagine. It is a vital instrument of truth. It is an instrument of order. But it is not an instrument of life-changing power. And in fact, everyone the law meets, it condemns, except for one person. That was the man Christ Jesus himself. The fault of all that historical record is not in the law. The fault is in the people the law addresses, and the only people the law has to work with are totally depraved people, with one exception. So the law addresses, it informs, it instructs, but it is only doing all that if the law were a person, he'd be a depressed person because he would find no success. He's informing truly and accurately with holiness and righteousness and justice and goodness, but all he's talking to are totally depraved people who will do nothing but render all your ministry false. That's all these people can do with it. They're in rebellion against God and you're sent to talk to them. The law is weak, in other words, Paul says, to deal with sinful people in any salvation sort of way. The law is weak in any friendly or hopeful or accommodating way to any person that encounters it. It doesn't mean the law is deficient. It doesn't mean the law by itself is a weak law. It is weak for the purposes for which the Jews have hijacked it. But, resuming the sentence now in chapter 8, But what the law could not do, weak as it was through fallen sinful human flesh, God did. Same thing as he says in our text. God did it, apart from the law, though it was in just submission to the law. It was exactly square with the law. It was in fact by the law, by the book we might say. And he did it, Romans 8, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin. And so in that way it says God condemned sin in the flesh. Quite the opposite effect of those who pervert grace into license for sin. And Paul continues in chapter 8. And God did this so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. That is, us who are justified by faith in the blood of Christ and thus, in chapter 8, are not walking according to the flesh, but are walking according to the Spirit. It doesn't mean we never do anything fleshly, but that's no longer our main mode of operation. We're not walking according to that. The same according to we saw will be judged according to the law and according to the production of our life. The preponderance of evidence is, we are walking according to the Holy Spirit, and these are the people in whom the righteous requirements of the law are being fulfilled. And thus, we are walking according to the Holy Spirit, which is synonymous with walking in faith. And this doctrine, and this life, thus upholds the law, because the law's righteous requirement is fulfilled for us, and then is applied to us, and is fulfilled in us. as God's righteousness is manifest. So walking by faith, walking by the Spirit, John puts it, walking in light, is of course walking in, walking with the resource of a power that began in your life with regeneration, with the new birth, not with any works of the law, not with even any efforts toward the law. And the end result, the long run end result, where we make tracks in the dust with our boots, is that we walk in love. It all sums up in walking in love. Love for God, love for His will, love for His word, love for His law, and love for His people. Love is, to make the long story short, the fulfilling of the law. Paul's filling in the doctrinal details here, but that's going to be his grand conclusion. Love's fulfilling of the law. Love is the upholding of the law. Love is the establishing of the law. The God who gave the law is love. Romans 9. speaks to the same end point. What shall we say then? He says, rhetorical question, verse 30 of chapter 9. What should we say then after giving our argument in chapter 8? Well, what we're going to say is this. The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness, in other words, they didn't even try to get righteous by the law of God. They didn't pursue it, yet they have attained to it. How on earth could that happen? They've attained to the righteousness of the law, but they never pursued the righteousness of the law. How'd they get there? Same way everybody gets there. By the new birth and by the justifying work of Christ. He clarifies this in chapter 9, verse 30. He says, I'm even talking about the righteousness of faith. This is the righteousness of God Himself. But Israel pursuing the law of righteousness, which is what God's law is, Israel pursuing that law, has by and large not attained to the law of righteousness. Why not? And he says, because they did not pursue it by faith. But as it turns out, they pursued the law of righteousness by the works of the law. In other words, in proud arrogance, in the vanity of their self-view, they presumed to step right up and prove themselves to be holy enough to fellowship with God by their conduct in thought, word, and deed before His holy law. They just stepped right up and started in. And Paul says, to make that long story short, many hundreds of years of human history, so they stumbled. They were offended in their arrogant and blind pride. They stumbled. They got offended. They got angry. They were insulted. It was an insult to their egos that God provided His true mercy for their salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. They stumbled at their own mercy seat for crying out loud. that was to live over their own law, over their own testimony. Meanwhile, that law is testifying about the mercy seat. And all the while, Paul says in chapter 9, meanwhile, whoever does believe on Jesus will never be put to shame. But if you're walking in the sandals of the Jewish people, you're put to utter shame. That's the outcome of such a false religion. That's how you destroy the law. But everyone who presumes to earn salvation by stepping up as they are to start keeping God's law is going to be put to shame. Worse than that is going to be put to eternal loss because they'll be eternally wrong. Romans chapter 13, clear at the end of Paul's conclusion of this line of logic about this powerful gospel of which he says right up front, I'm not ashamed of it because it's so powerful. And then he takes all these chapters to show us how powerful it is. And we're supposed to experience it, not just learn about it, by the way. But when he's summing it all up, he will say in chapter 13, bottom line is this, don't owe anybody anything except love. Talking about living within the fellowship of Christ, in the family of Christ. Owe no person anything except love for one another, because he who loves his neighbor neighbor, the people in proximity to you, that's not the people in Africa, that's the people that are around you rubbing shoulders with you, the people God has assembled around you. He who loves those people has fulfilled the law. Because all the statements of the law, all the commandments are summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. It's easy to love somebody 150 miles away, but how about loving the people you rub shoulders with? That's where the proof is. And that's the exact same point. The end point of the whole doctrinal book of Romans is the exact same as the simple book of 1 John, written in what scholars say is such abominable Greek usage it shouldn't even be printed. Wouldn't even pass an editor's scrutiny if it tried to be published today. And they both say the same thing. So who can miss it? It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how simple you are. You can't miss that point. It's all summed up. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And if you get to be that kind of a person, you only get to be that way by the new birth and by the justification Christ has paid for. Paul says further in chapter 13, love does no wrong to a neighbor. So how would you be out of square with the law? Love does no wrong to a neighbor because it loves the neighbor. Therefore, love of believers for one another is the fulfilling of the law. is the upholding of the law, is the establishing of the law, is, in fact, the obedience of the law. Love is, of course, the powerful fruit of the Holy Spirit in the lives of born-again justified believers. And Paul asked the Galatians, if you flip over to that parallel reading, Paul asked them, here's his question, does God provide the Holy Spirit to you? And does God work miracles in your life and in your congregation then by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? How's that going? He says. How's that going? How did you get the Holy Spirit? How did you get to where you are? How did you get the claim you have before the justice of God? Exactly how did that happen? Because you were such good law keepers all your life? Or did it happen because once upon a time you started hearing what God said by faith? And that has just been steamrolling in your life ever since. Of course, the answer is it is all by the hearing of faith. That's the secret of how the Holy Spirit works. That's how He works for us. That's how He works in us. It's also how He works through us. It is all by hearing with faith. If you don't hear with faith, you're wasting your time to even pray. You hear with faith. That's what makes the difference. That's how you fulfill the law. That's how you uphold the law. And so we're full circle in answering this question of verse 31. The whole rest of the book will answer this question. Justification by faith is properly established as a plan of salvation which establishes the law of God, which upholds the law of God, which fulfills the law of God, which obeys the law of God. And in fact, in the Galatian letter, if you read over there, this is exactly the point at which Paul begins his doctrinal presentation of justification by faith. This is his launching point. Romans chapter 7, verse 4. We don't want to let that reference out. To the same point. Romans chapter 7, he's going to argue, quote, We have become dead to the law as a husband. The law is not our husband anymore. It never really was supposed to be. Dead to the law as a husband. Dead to the law as a means of salvation. Dead to the law as a means of anything it was never intended to be. We've become dead to the law through the body of Christ so that we may be lawfully married to Christ, he will argue. so that we may actually bear fruit to God, bear fruit before God, so we can actually stand before God in peace with God's law being upheld, with the testimony and the justice of our mercy being fully compatible. We need not any longer go to the testimony and wish for mercy, or go to the testimony and long for mercy. Or even go to the testimony and hope for mercy. We start at the mercy seat. And we embrace the law as truth while we're there. And that's entirely just. And entirely proper. And entirely honorable. That's how God wants His law to be honored. By new hearts, new minds, new attitudes, new people. Verse 5, chapter 7, he goes on. While our old nature was all there was to us, that's my paraphrase, While that was the case, while that was all we were as a state of being, our sinful passions and desires were aroused by the law. Now, when a self-righteous person is telling you how righteous they are, you read this verse and you tell them, this is actually what's going on in your life. You're hiding this from everybody. You're promoting the two laws you kept yesterday, but you're hiding a whole world of sinful passion and desire that is inflamed in you because sin is awakened in you when you read the law of God. That's the result in an old person, and if they won't be honest enough to tell you, you can go ahead and tell them, because Paul says that's how it works. These sinful desires, Paul says, he's telling his own testimony, he's humiliating himself to tell the truth here, as every testimony does. Every true testimony, he's saying, I tell you what, that's the way it was for me. He says, these sinful desires were at work in us. in who we were, in our physical bodies, in the members of our bodies, in our brains, in our minds. It's all we were. What would you expect? When a person who loves sin finds a list of things that are against sin, it wants to do them, even if it never thought of them before, it now wants to do them. And all that does, he says in Romans 7-5, is bear fruit to death. But all this system, you see, this is how the law is weak to deal with us. Pity the law. Don't insult it. Pity it. How can it deal with us? This is how our wickedness perverts the holy law of God. If we were righteous, the law wouldn't be weak toward us. We'd have wonderful fellowship before God. Verse 6, chapter 7, he continues, But now we've been delivered from that perspective on the law. We've been delivered from the law, having died to that by which we were held, which was sin. We've died to sin. That's how you get free from the law's prosecution and the law's indictment. So that now, he continues, now we serve in the newness of the Holy Spirit. That's how we serve God now, not in the oldness of the raw letter all by itself. And thus, he says, we establish and uphold the law in its proper status, but we are freed from the tyranny and the vain futility of law-keeping for salvation by old sinful natures. So where is boasting? Absolutely excluded. It is excluded by a law of faith because the one true God only has one way of saving any person in the whole wide world, in the history of the whole wide world. And that one way is by His grace, through faith. And that is not of ourselves. It is entirely the gift of God. justified by the work of Christ, which also justifies whosoever will trust in His shed blood and believe on His name alone.