What Does “We Uphold the Law” Mean?
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law Romans 3:27-31
‘Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith?’ (3:31). By ‘the law’ the Jews usually meant the Torah, the law given through Moses. Because the Hebrew word ‘torah’ was derived from the verb ‘to instruct,’ its meaning was extended to include the entire Old Testament scriptures (seen as God’s instruction).
‘Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law’ (3:31). How we understand this depends on how we understand ‘the law.’ If the whole Old Testament is meant, the gospel of justification by faith upholds the law by showing that the Old Testament taught the truth of justifying faith (3:21). If this is what Paul had in mind, the verse we are now looking at becomes a transition to Romans 4 where Paul argues that both Abraham and David were justified by faith.
If Paul is using ‘the law’ in the more restricted sense of the law of Moses, then saying faith upholds rather than nullifies the law can be understood in two ways. First, faith upholds the law by assigning it its proper place in God’s purposes. In His scheme of salvation law functioned to expose and condemn sin, keeping sinners locked up in guilt until Christ came to liberate them through faith (Galatians 3:15-4:7). In this way the law and faith dovetail each other. Faith justifies those the law condemns.
The alternate explanation to faith upholding the law sees it as Paul’s response to a different set of critics. Paul must have been challenged with the charge that by declaring justification to be by faith and not obedience, he was actively encouraging disobedience. In Romans 6 – 8 he refutes this charge quite fully; here he just states that faith upholds the law. If this was his thinking, Paul may have seen the need to uphold the law as a standard of God’s holiness, now fulfilled in Christ (8:4). We who are in Christ are therefore accounted as having fulfilled the law and been set free from its penalties for disobedience. It is this very freedom from the law’s condemnation that puts us into a relationship in which true obedience, motivated and directed by the Spirit, can come about. Justified believers who live according to the Spirit fulfil the righteous requirements of the law (8:4; 13:8,10).
In Galatians 5:16 Paul writes ‘So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.’ The word ‘live’ here translates a word that means ‘to walk around everywhere’ and was used to signify ‘one’s whole life.’ In this sense Paul was saying: bring the Holy Spirit into every part of your life. How do we do that? We simply ask Him to be involved with every part of our day.
Later in the same chapter of Galatians, Paul instructs the believers ‘let us keep in step with the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25). This is a military term used in marching and drill. We are to ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ by letting the Holy Spirit set the pace and the daily program for our lives. We are to do what He says, when He says and how He says. This might be a new thought to many but only because we’ve ‘read over’ Galatians 5:25 without applying it. It’s time to apply it. Are you ready?