Not by Keeping the Law

Test the Teaching · Article 6 of 9 · 2026-11-08 · Key passages: Galatians 2:16; 5:4. Quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB); please check each one in your own Bible.

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What we confess.

To us there is “one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we live through him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31), who “has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2). He “died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3), was buried, and “was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:4). “God has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and “This Jesus, who was received up from you into the sky, will come back” (Acts 1:11).

Must a believer keep the law of Moses to belong to God? A believer may be told, kindly and sincerely, that Jesus kept the law and taught it, that the Sabbath was made at creation and covenanted forever, and that faith in Jesus completes a man by bringing him under God's law rather than out from under it. In its sharpest form he may be told that if he will not keep the law — beginning with the Sabbath — he shows that he does not truly belong to Christ at all; in the form in which the apostles first met it, he may be told that he cannot be saved without it.

This article tests the requirement, not obedience. No one in these pages argues that obedience does not matter: the article's own answer is that believers are bound, truly bound — by the law of Christ. What we test is the claim that the covenant at Sinai, as a covenant, still stands over the believer in Christ, so that its keeping is the ground or the proof of his acceptance with God. Where Scripture is silent, we will say so and stop.

Passages: Galatians 2:16; 5:4; Colossians 2:16–17.

Read These First

  • Galatians 2:16: a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
  • Galatians 5:4: whoever desires to be justified by the law is alienated from Christ and has fallen away from grace.
  • Galatians 3:24–25: the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ; now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
  • Romans 7:4–6: made dead to the law through the body of Christ, discharged from it, serving in newness of the Spirit.
  • Colossians 2:16–17: feast days, new moons, and Sabbath days are a shadow of the things to come; the body is Christ's.
  • Acts 15:10, 28: the apostles refused to put the law's yoke on the disciples, and laid on the nations no greater burden than a few necessary things.
  • Romans 6:15: being not under law but under grace is no license to sin — “May it never be!” (Romans 6:15).
  • Galatians 6:2: bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

First: the ground of acceptance itself.

Not Justified by the Works of the Law

What the text says. Paul puts the whole question in one sentence, and repeats its answer three times inside a single verse: “yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.” (Galatians 2:16). He is not speaking of pagans reaching for God by effort; he is speaking as a Jew of Jews — “We, being Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners” (Galatians 2:15) — about the law God himself gave Israel. And he draws the line under his own standing under it: “For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God.” (Galatians 2:19). “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20). Then the conclusion that governs the whole letter: “I don’t reject the grace of God. For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21).

The law's own terms are the reason. “For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.’” (Galatians 3:10). The law does not offer partial credit: its standard is all things, continued in, always. “Now that no man is justified by the law before God is evident, for, ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” (Galatians 3:11). What Christ did with that curse is the gospel itself: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13). And Paul states the consequence for anyone who returns to law-keeping as the ground of acceptance, in words that leave no middle: “You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.” (Galatians 5:4). The way back is fenced as well: “if you receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing” (Galatians 5:2), for the man who takes the covenant's sign “is a debtor to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3).

What we conclude. This is the text, and it is not hedged. Justification — being counted righteous before God — is by faith in Christ and not by works of the law (Galatians 2:16); the law, taken as the way to righteousness, brings a curse it cannot lift and Christ has borne (Galatians 3:10, 13); and to seek justification by the law is not a stricter Christianity but a departure from grace (Galatians 5:4). A teaching that binds justification to law-keeping must set these sentences aside; the sentences will not bend.

The scope of these verses. Two things should be noticed before we go on. Paul's debtor owes “the whole law” (Galatians 5:3): Paul knows no part-debt — a point that will matter when the law is sorted into a part that fell and a part that stands. And the sentence of Galatians 5:4 falls on the man who seeks to be justified by the law — the teaching in the form that makes law-keeping necessary to acceptance, the form of Acts 15:1. Where the teaching professes justification by faith and claims the law as obedience afterward, that verse is not its answer, and this article does not use it there; the answer to that form is the custody question of the sections that follow.

The strongest objection. Those who hold that the law still binds answer first from the Lord's own words to a man who asked the very question of this article:

Behold, one came to him and said, “Good teacher, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder.’ ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ‘You shall not steal.’ ‘You shall not offer false testimony.’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ And, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The young man said to him, “All these things I have observed from my youth. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he was one who had great possessions.

— Matthew 19:16–22

As they argue it, Jesus himself directs a seeker after eternal life to the commandments, and names them. If the law had been set aside, or was about to be, the Lord's answer to the most important question a man can ask would have pointed elsewhere.

Our answer. Read the whole exchange, and notice where it ends. We do not blunt the Lord's condition itself: “if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17) is the law's true terms, truly spoken — “The man who does them will live by them” (Galatians 3:12). The gospel's news is not that Jesus misstated those terms; it is that no flesh is justified by meeting them (Galatians 2:16) — and the story shows what he did with the man who claimed he had met them. Jesus gives the man the law's own answer, and the law's own answer does its own work: the man claims the list — “All these things I have observed from my youth” (Matthew 19:20) — and still asks, “What do I still lack?” (Matthew 19:20). The law kept at the level of the list leaves a man knowing he lacks something. Then Jesus names it, and the thing he names is not another commandment from Sinai: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21). Our conclusion is that the road into life, in the Lord's own handling of the question, runs through following him: the commandments brought the man to the door; they were not the door. Notice too which commandments Jesus names: the second table, and at their head the summary of them all, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19) — the same two commandments on which he says “The whole law and the prophets depend” (Matthew 22:40). Our conclusion is that this exchange, read whole, is the law doing exactly what Paul says it does: it leaves the keeper asking what he lacks, and the answer is a person to follow, not a longer list. Our conclusion is also that the exchange belongs to its moment: the young man was a son of the covenant the law governed, asking before the cross; what the apostles afterward taught the churches about that covenant is the question of the next sections, and it is answered there from their own words.

Pause. In Galatians 2:16, how many times does Paul say in one verse that a man is not justified by the works of the law — and what does Galatians 5:4 call the man who seeks to be justified by the law? (See Not Justified by the Works of the Law.)

No Longer Under a Tutor

What the text says. Paul gives the law an office and a term: “So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24). “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” (Galatians 3:25). A tutor is not an enemy, and Paul never treats the law as one: “Therefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good.” (Romans 7:12). But the custody has ended. “Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might produce fruit to God.” (Romans 7:4). “But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.” (Romans 7:6). The standing is stated as a plain fact: “For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:14). Paul's sentence for Christ and the law stands with them: “For Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:4). And the letter to the Hebrews says of the first covenant itself: “In that he says, ‘A new covenant’, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away.” (Hebrews 8:13). Paul says what Christ's cross did to “the law of commandments contained in ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15): “having abolished in his flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace” (Ephesians 2:15).

What we conclude. The law's words stand forever as Scripture; its custody does not. Our conclusion is that the apostles teach one movement, in passage after passage: the law was given, it was holy, it served as tutor and keeper until Christ came — and the believer's discharge from it is not release into nothing, but transfer to another: joined to the risen Christ, serving in newness of the Spirit (Romans 7:4, 6). What ended is the covenant's rule over the believer, not the believer's service. Our conclusion is also that these passages speak of the law as the apostles' one subject — the law of Moses as a whole covenant — and not of a ceremonial part of it sorted from a moral part: the apostles never make that sort, and Paul's debtor is a debtor “to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3), under a curse for failing in “all things that are written in the book of the law” (Galatians 3:10). And where Romans 10:4 is used in this article, our conclusion is that “fulfillment” (Romans 10:4) names Christ as the law's goal and completion — the One to whom its custody led — which is how the ended term is to be understood.

The strongest objection. The holders answer with the Lord's charter words for the law's permanence:

“Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill. For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

— Matthew 5:17–19

As they argue it, Jesus forbids the very thought that he came to set the law aside: heaven and earth will pass before a letter of it does, and the man who breaks or teaches against even the least commandment is named least in the Kingdom. A reading that releases believers from the law, they say, makes Jesus destroy what he said he came to fulfill.

Our answer. We grant the words their full force: Jesus did not come to destroy the law, and nothing in this article says he did. His own contrast is not destroy or preserve forever unchanged — it is destroy or fulfill, and fulfillment is a completion, not a cancellation: what the law and the prophets pointed to arrived in him — that is our conclusion about his contrast, and the verse itself carries the horizon twice over: “until heaven and earth pass away” (Matthew 5:18), and “until all things are accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). Our conclusion is that the law stands in force until its accomplishment, and the accomplishment is the Lord's own work. Paul's sentence for the same arrival is: “Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:4). Jesus also spoke while the covenant he fulfilled still stood, being himself “born to a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:4–5); he kept the law he was born under, perfectly — which is why his keeping can redeem, and why it is not the pattern of a covenant still to be kept by those he redeemed out of it. The saying about the least commandments (Matthew 5:19) governs teaching in the Kingdom as Jesus was then announcing it; it does not address the question the apostles faced after the resurrection — whether the Sinai covenant, as a covenant, binds those who have died to it in Christ — and the apostles answered that question in so many words (Galatians 3:25; Romans 7:4). Nor does the saying single out the Sabbath for protection: it guards the commandments as a class, in the days before the accomplishment — and the apostles who heard it did not take it to exempt any commandment from the discharge they afterward announced; they wrote the shadow sentence about the Sabbath themselves (Colossians 2:16). Our conclusion is that Matthew 5:17–19 forbids treating the law as destroyed or despised, and we do neither: every letter of it stands as God's word, profitable and true. What the verse does not do is freeze the law's custody in place after the fulfillment it prophesies; the apostles, who heard these words from the Lord himself, did not read it that way.

The Council Would Not Lay the Yoke

What the text says. This teaching is not new, and Scripture records its first making — and the church's first answer to it. Men came to Antioch teaching: “Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can’t be saved.” (Acts 15:1). In Jerusalem the demand was put in its full form: “It is necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” (Acts 15:5). The apostles and elders gathered, and Peter answered from what God had already done: “He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.” (Acts 15:9). Then the sentence this article rests on: “Now therefore why do you tempt God, that you should put a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” (Acts 15:10). “But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.” (Acts 15:11). The council's letter laid the matter down as a ceiling, not a first installment: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay no greater burden on you than these necessary things: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality, from which if you keep yourselves, it will be well with you.” (Acts 15:28–29). James's own judgment matches: “we don’t trouble those from among the Gentiles who turn to God, but that we write to them that they abstain from the pollution of idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood.” (Acts 15:19–20). And years later the decree is cited again, in the same terms: the Gentile believers “should observe no such thing, except that they should keep themselves from food offered to idols, from blood, from strangled things, and from sexual immorality” (Acts 21:25).

What we conclude. When the claim that believers must keep the law of Moses was first made in the church, the apostles — Peter among them, who had himself lived under the law — called the law, laid on disciples, a yoke neither they nor their fathers could bear, and put salvation where this article puts it: “we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 15:11). Our conclusion is that Acts 15 is not a temporary arrangement for beginners; it is the apostolic church's settled answer to this exact teaching, delivered the first time the teaching was made.

The strongest objection. Holders of the Torah-observant form answer from the verse that follows the decree in James's speech: “For Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.” (Acts 15:21). As they argue it, the four items of the decree are a doorway, not a destination: Gentile believers would sit under Moses' reading every Sabbath and grow into the whole law; the council simply did not burden new converts with everything at once.

Our answer. Read what the council actually sent, and how it describes its own letter: “to lay no greater burden on you than these necessary things” (Acts 15:28). No greater burden is the apostles' own description of the decree's extent, spoken in the Holy Spirit's name; a syllabus with the whole law waiting in week two is a greater burden, and the letter gives that reading no foothold. Our conclusion is that James's sentence about Moses read in every city (Acts 15:21) gives the setting in which the four items mattered — cities where Moses was preached every Sabbath, where idol-pollution, blood, and strangled meat were the live points of friction between the Gentile believers and the synagogues among them — not a curriculum assigned to the believers. And when the apostles' decision is restated years afterward, it is restated as the whole of it: “they should observe no such thing, except…” (Acts 21:25). Our conclusion is that the decree means what it says — the apostles laid the law's covenant aside for the nations with open eyes, and the one addition they made was fellowship's necessities, not Moses by installments.

The reason James gives. It is said that his sentence begins with a ground — “For Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him” (Acts 15:21) — and must therefore state the reason the decree goes no further: Moses is already being taught, and the believers will grow into the rest in due course. But the ground serves the decree as written at least as well: Moses preached in every city is exactly why four abstentions sufficed — the new believers lived surrounded by the synagogue's world, and the four were the points where their former life would collide with it. Our conclusion is that the sentence explains the decree's setting; it assigns no syllabus — and the letter it prefaces records that the law-teachers had acted without the apostles' commandment (Acts 15:24).

The sojourner's duties. It is also said that the four items are the old duties of the foreigner who lived among Israel (Leviticus 17–18), so that the decree places the nations inside the law's framework. We answer that the parallel cuts the other way: the sojourner was never circumcised into the covenant and never made a debtor to the whole law; he was given his boundaries precisely as one who remained outside its custody. Our conclusion is that the council gave the nations the sojourner's standing — received at Israel's table, not made debtors of Israel's law.

Paul's own practice. The same record should be read whole in Acts 21: James reports that the Jewish believers are “all zealous for the law” (Acts 21:20), and Paul purifies himself so that all will know “that you yourself also walk keeping the law” (Acts 21:24). We do not pass over the chapter; we read to its end — the same James, in the same conversation, restates the rule for the nations in its limited form (Acts 21:25), as quoted above. Jewish believers' own observance is one thing; Paul explains his share in it as accommodation for the gospel's sake: “to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain those who are under the law” (1 Corinthians 9:20). What may be laid on the nations is another question, and Acts answers it twice, the same way.

Shadows, and the Substance

What the text says. Paul names the calendar itself: “Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.” (Colossians 2:16–17). Feast day, new moon, Sabbath day — the calendar itself is named, and the sentence's verdict on the things named is shadow: the outline cast ahead of the thing itself, precious for what it announced, not the substance. The substance has come: “the body is Christ’s” (Colossians 2:17). On days, Paul leaves the believer where he leaves him in Romans: “One man esteems one day as more important. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5). “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it.” (Romans 14:6).

What we conclude. Our conclusion: the weekly Sabbath stands in Paul's list among the shadows the law cast before Christ (Colossians 2:16–17), and days are therefore left by the apostle to each believer's own assurance before the Lord (Romans 14:5). The threefold list is the Old Testament's own summary of Israel's standing calendar: God would cause to cease “her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths” (Hosea 2:11), and the prince supplies the offerings “in the feasts, and on the new moons, and on the Sabbaths” (Ezekiel 45:17) — in both, the Sabbaths named are the weekly days of Israel's worship. A believer may keep a day to the Lord and be received; a believer may not be judged for not keeping it; and no one may lay the day on another as God's command — that is the teaching tested here, stated from the other side as well: what is refused is the requirement, in either direction of compulsion.

The strongest objection. The Sabbatarian form of the teaching answers that the Sabbath is no ceremonial shadow but the law's own foundation stone — older than Sinai, and covenanted forever:

Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

— Exodus 31:16–17

God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work of creation which he had done.

— Genesis 2:3

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

— Exodus 20:8–11

As they argue it, the Sabbath was made at creation, before there was a Jew or a ceremony; God calls it a perpetual covenant and a sign forever; and it stands in the Ten Commandments, spoken by God's own voice — not among the shadows of sacrifices and feasts that pointed forward to Christ. And the fourth commandment itself grounds the day in creation: “for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth… and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11).

Our answer. We grant the Sabbath's dignity in full: made holy at creation, given to Israel as the covenant's sign, spoken among the Ten Words. The first answer concerns the word perpetual, and we state plainly what it proves and what it does not. It proves that perpetual, by itself, does not bar a change God afterward makes: the priesthood was given “by a perpetual statute” (Exodus 29:9) — Aaron's sons hold it, in God's words, permanently — and yet “the priesthood being changed, there is of necessity a change made also in the law” (Hebrews 7:12). A statute called perpetual within its covenant was changed when the covenant's priesthood was; the word marks the statute's standing inside the covenant God gave, not a bar on the change God himself afterward made. It does not prove, by itself, that the Sabbath was among the things changed; that question is answered by the apostles' own treatment of the day, to which we now come. And the covenant's own sign says whose sign it is: “a sign between me and the children of Israel forever” (Exodus 31:17) — given to Israel under the covenant the apostles say believers have died to (Romans 7:4). Genesis blesses the seventh day and calls it holy (Genesis 2:3); what Genesis does not record is a command to man to keep it — the command, and the covenant, are Israel's at Sinai. Then Paul names the day itself: “a Sabbath day” (Colossians 2:16) stands in his shadow list beside the feasts and new moons, and no exception is made for it. The reply is made that Paul's Sabbaths are only the feasts' ceremonial rest days, which Leviticus itself distinguishes “in addition to the Sabbaths of Yahweh” (Leviticus 23:38). But Leviticus 23 heads its own list — “The set feasts of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations” (Leviticus 23:2) — with the weekly day: “on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation” (Leviticus 23:3) — the chapter counts the weekly Sabbath at the head of the feasts, and its later distinction separates the feasts' added rest days from the weekly Sabbaths; it does not separate the weekly day from the feasts' company. And Paul's threefold formula is the Old Testament's own calendar summary (Hosea 2:11; Ezekiel 45:17), in which the Sabbath named is the weekly day. Our conclusion is that the Sabbath's creation holiness and covenant dignity are real, and neither is the question: the question is whether the day binds, as law, those in Christ — and the apostle answers that it is a shadow, and that the body is Christ's.

A second objection. Jesus himself gives the day to mankind: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27–28). As they argue it, a day made for man — for mankind, not for Israel only — is a creation ordinance for all men in all ages, and the Lord of the day confirms it rather than repealing it.

Our answer. We grant the premise in full: the day was made for man, a gift and a mercy, not a burden invented at Sinai — and the sentence should be read to its end. Jesus' own conclusion is not an obligation but a lordship: “the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). The day stands under its Lord, and it is that Lord whose apostles afterward would not let anyone judge his people over a Sabbath day (Colossians 2:16). Our conclusion is that “made for man” (Mark 2:27) gives the day's kindness, not its custody: the sentence that calls the day man's gift was spoken defending hungry disciples against the day's fences, and it does not lay the day on the nations as covenant law.

A third objection. They also cite the letter to the Hebrews: “There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” (Hebrews 4:9). As they argue it, a Sabbath-keeping remains for God's people under the new covenant itself, and the verse preserves the weekly day inside the faith.

Our answer. The chapter defines its own rest before the verse is reached: “For we who have believed do enter into that rest” (Hebrews 4:3) — the rest is entered by faith, present tense, not observed by calendar. And its history rules out the weekly day: “For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day.” (Hebrews 4:8). Joshua's Israel had the weekly Sabbath for centuries in the land; the writer's argument is that the rest God still speaks of is therefore another rest than the day they already kept. Our conclusion is that Hebrews 4 promises the people of God a rest entered by believing — God's own rest, into which the weekly day was only ever a doorway — and it is entered the way the chapter says: by faith (Hebrews 4:3). And the chapter's distinctive word should be faced, for the holder rests much on it: after speaking of rest through the whole argument, the writer closes with the particular phrase “a Sabbath rest” (Hebrews 4:9). Our conclusion is that the phrase names the rest by its pattern, not by man's observance of a day: the rest in view is God's own — the rest of the One who “rested on the seventh day from all his works” (Hebrews 4:4) — and the writer defines entering it in the same terms: “he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:10). The Sabbath word is reached for because the rest is God's Sabbath rest, which the weekly day pictured; a rest that “remains” (Hebrews 4:9), to be entered by faith, cannot be the day Israel had kept every week since Sinai.

We Establish the Law

What the text says. The sentence the holders cite stands in the middle of Paul's own argument, and the argument gives the sentence its meaning. First, the law's office: “Now we know that whatever things the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God.” (Romans 3:19). “Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight; for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20). Then the turn: “But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets” (Romans 3:21). The law itself is a witness to the righteousness that comes apart from it. And Paul closes the same chapter with love's fulfillment of the law's demand: “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8); “Love doesn’t harm a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10).

What we conclude. Our conclusion is that the law is established the way a witness is established: believed, honored, and heard in full — including its testimony that righteousness is not by it (Romans 3:20–21). Our conclusion is that nothing in Romans retires the law's words or its witness; what is retired, in this same letter, is the believer's standing under it (Romans 6:14; 7:4). Those are different claims, and the letter makes them both.

The strongest objection. The holders answer from the chapter's own conclusion:

Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! No, we establish the law.

— Romans 3:31

As they argue it, Paul anticipates the charge that faith sets the law aside, and rejects it with his strongest denial: faith establishes the law. The law upheld by faith cannot be a law whose keeping has ended.

Our answer. We say the verse with Paul, and we ask what establish carries in the argument he is finishing. The law he has just expounded does three things in his hands: it shuts every mouth and brings the world under judgment (Romans 3:19); it gives the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20); and it testifies — with the prophets — to the righteousness of God revealed apart from it (Romans 3:21). Our conclusion is that faith establishes the law in all three: it believes the law's accusation instead of arguing with it, and it receives the righteousness the law itself pointed to. What faith does not do is put the believer back under the law's custody to be justified by it — the very thing the chapter denies (Romans 3:20) and the letter later states as fact: “you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). And the law's moral demand is not discarded but fulfilled — by the love faith works: “Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10). Our conclusion is that Romans 3:31 upholds the law's office and aim; read as a return to its custody, it contradicts the chapter it concludes.

A second objection. They also sing the psalm:

How I love your law! It is my meditation all day.

— Psalm 119:97

All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever.

— Psalm 119:160

“Yahweh, your word is settled in heaven forever.” (Psalm 119:89). As they argue it, the longest chapter in the Bible is one man's delight in the law, and its confession is permanence: God's ordinances endure forever, and his word is settled in heaven. A passing custody cannot be the meditation of the saints forever.

Our answer. We do not answer the psalm down; we join it. God's word is settled in heaven forever (Psalm 119:89) — this article quotes the law's own words throughout precisely because they endure as God's word; we read Moses as Scripture because his words endure, not because his custody does. The law “indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12) — Paul sings in the psalm's own key. But the psalm's breadth is wider than the code: the singer delights in God's word, his promises, his statutes, his ways — the whole counsel of God as he had received it, under the covenant that then contained it. The question Psalm 119 never poses is the apostles' question: after the fulfillment, under which covenant does the believer stand? Our conclusion is that David sang from Sinai's side of the cross, as was right, and the apostles answered from the other side — and that the two stand together: the law's words are forever (Psalm 119:160), and its custody reached its term when the One it testified to came (Galatians 3:25). Our conclusion is that Psalm 119 settles the law's dignity and permanence as God's word — a point this article insists on — and does not settle, because it does not ask, the covenant question Galatians and Romans were written to answer.

Bound by the Law of Christ

What the text says. The believer is not cut loose; he is bound — and the binding is named. Jesus sums the whole: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37–40). The Lord's own terms for his disciples: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15). “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.” (John 15:12). “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John 15:14). Paul names the binding directly: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2). And he describes his own standing with a phrase that forbids the word lawless: “not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21). John gathers it into one sentence for the churches: “This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded.” (1 John 3:23).

What we conclude. Our conclusion: believers are bound by the law of Christ — love, and the commands Jesus and the apostles gave. The commands that bind now are God's commands still; they are carried, summed, and interpreted by Christ's own word, and they bind the conscience with his authority. Obedience is not the ground of the believer's acceptance — that ground is faith in Christ (Galatians 2:16) — but obedience is the shape of his life, the fruit of his adoption, and the test of his claim to know God. Nothing in this article releases a believer from a single command his Lord has given him.

The strongest objection. The holders answer with John's test and the last book's description of the saints:

This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments. One who says, “I know him,” and doesn’t keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth isn’t in him.

— 1 John 2:3–4

“Here is the perseverance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12). As they argue it, the marks are plain: knowing God is tested by commandment-keeping, and the saints of the last days are identified by keeping God's commandments and holding the faith of Jesus — both together, which is exactly the law-and-Jesus life the holders describe.

Our answer. We take John's test at full strength — it is aimed at the man who claims to know God and does not obey him, and this article refuses that man its comfort. The question is which commandments John means, and John answers it himself, in the same letter: “This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded.” (1 John 3:23). Our conclusion is that his commandments in John's writings carry the content Jesus himself gave the phrase — “keep my commandments” (John 14:15) — and the commandment Jesus names as his own is love (John 15:12). John's readers are never sent by John to the Sabbath, the feasts, or the food laws to prove they know God; they are sent to faith in the Son and love of the brothers. John's strongest sentence for the holders should be quoted whole, and we believe every word of it: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous.” (1 John 5:2–3). The verse gives the test at full strength; it does not give the test's contents — and it is John who supplies them, in the sentence already quoted: believe in the Son, and love one another (1 John 3:23). And Revelation's pairing is granted exactly as it stands: “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12) are two marks of the saints — obedience and faith — and this article denies neither. The question is only what commandments the book means; and the same book describes the same company as those who “keep God’s commandments and hold Jesus’ testimony” (Revelation 12:17) — one people, whose obedience travels with holding Jesus' testimony. Neither text lists a calendar or names Sinai's covenant; the contents come from where the New Testament gives them — from Christ and his apostles. Our conclusion is that 1 John 2:3–4 and Revelation 14:12 are honored at full strength by the law of Christ: the saints are commandment-keepers, and the commandments are the ones their Lord and his apostles laid on them. A test of obedience is not a map back to Sinai unless the text draws it, and these texts draw the opposite — they define the commands by Christ.

The opposite ditch

This article must also refuse the error on the other side, by name: antinomianism — the teaching that because believers are not under law, obedience does not matter and sin is no great thing. Paul meets it in the very passage that announces our freedom: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:1–2). And again, at the verse itself: “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!” (Romans 6:15). Grace is not permission; it is a teacher: “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age” (Titus 2:11–12). Our conclusion is that not-under-law and not-without-law are both the apostles' teaching (1 Corinthians 9:21), and any use of this article that leaves a reader content in his sin has denied the article: the freedom Christ gives is freedom from the law's custody and curse, for a life bound gladly to the law of Christ.

The Teaching We Differ From

The teaching this article tests holds that God has not set his Law aside: the covenant at Sinai still binds those who would belong to God, so that keeping it belongs to being right with him. It is held in two forms, and they are not the same teaching in every detail.

In its Sabbatarian form: the Ten Commandments endure exactly as given, and the Sabbath among them — made holy at creation, covenanted to Israel forever, and never repealed — binds every believer in Christ. The ceremonial law of sacrifices and feasts has passed away in Christ, its holder gladly says; but the moral law, and the Sabbath at its heart, stands perpetual.

In its Torah-observant form: the whole law of Moses remains the walk of Jesus' followers — its Sabbaths, feasts, food laws, and commandments — because Jesus himself kept it and taught it, and faith in him brings a believer into that obedience rather than out of it. The church's release from the law, on this telling, is the falling away to be repented of.

In its first form — the form the apostles themselves met — it goes further: circumcision and the keeping of the law are made necessary to salvation itself (Acts 15:1, 5). In the form most holders profess today, justification by faith is confessed as plainly as we confess it, and the law is claimed as the obedience of the justified: a believer who will not keep it shows, on this telling, that he does not truly belong to Christ. These statements are faithful summaries of the positions, in the holders' own terms as we understand them — not quotations of any holder's words.

The two forms are answered by different texts in this article, and we do not confuse them. Paul's sentences on seeking justification by the law (Galatians 2:16; 5:4) answer the first form. The second form is answered by the custody texts — the tutor's ended term (Galatians 3:25), the discharge (Romans 7:6), the council's refusal (Acts 15:10, 28), and the shadow list (Colossians 2:16) — which speak not of how a man is justified but of what authority the law still holds over those who are in Christ.

We say plainly what we share with its holders, because it is much. We share that the law is God's own: “the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12). We share the psalm's delight in it (Psalm 119:97) and its confession that God's word stands forever (Psalm 119:89). We share that Jesus kept the law perfectly, as the Son born under it (Galatians 4:4). We share, above all, that obedience matters — that the man who says he knows God and does not keep his commandments is a liar (1 John 2:4). The difference is not whether God is to be obeyed, but which word of God governs the believer's standing: the covenant whose custody Paul says has ended, or the Christ who fulfilled it and whose law now binds us.

What we cannot share is the requirement. The apostles were asked this question directly — by name, in the first churches, in the sharpest form (Acts 15:1, 5) — and they answered it directly: a yoke not to be laid on disciples (Acts 15:10), justification not by the law's works (Galatians 2:16), a tutor whose term has come (Galatians 3:25), a Sabbath named among shadows (Colossians 2:16), and a people bound instead by the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). Our conclusion is that the teaching fails at its center: it requires of believers what the apostles, in council and in letter, refused to require — in its first form it makes the ground of acceptance a custody from which Christ redeemed his people, and in its second it lays on the justified a yoke the apostles refused to lay on any disciple.

A verse that rules out a teaching does not say that those who hold it are lost, and we do not say it either. Many who hold this teaching take God's commands with a seriousness the churches need, love the Scriptures they were taught from, and keep days and laws to the Lord with a clear conscience — and the apostle's word stands for them as for us: “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord” (Romans 14:6). We ask every reader to do with us what we ask throughout this series: open the text, and read it in context. Keep what is true.

Questions Answered

These questions touch this article. Each is answered from Scripture and labeled. The Statement of Faith, section 15, gives the same answers.

The Sabbath, and which commands bind believers. Our conclusion: believers are not under the Law of Moses as a covenant, so the weekly Sabbath does not bind them. They are bound by the law of Christ: love, and the commands Jesus and the apostles gave (Colossians 2:16; 2:17). Read the other way: Exodus 31:16; Matthew 5:17–18; Hebrews 4:9; Genesis 2:3; Mark 2:27. Confidence: Solid. Colossians 2:16 and Romans 14:5 speak to days directly: Paul names the Sabbath day itself among the shadows, and leaves days to each believer’s assurance. The framework is the apostles’: believers “were made dead to the law through the body of Christ” (Romans 7:4) and are “under law toward Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21), bound to “fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Perpetual does not settle Exodus 31:16: the priesthood was given “by a perpetual statute” (Exodus 29:9) and was changed (Hebrews 7:12). The rest of Hebrews 4 is entered by faith, not the weekly day Joshua’s Israel already had (Hebrews 4:3, 8).

Days Scripture does not command, such as Christmas and Halloween. Our conclusion: each believer may keep such a day to the Lord or not keep it, fully assured in his own mind, and no one may judge another over it. A thing once used for idols is not forbidden for that alone, as Paul allowed meat from the market. But no one may worship another god, or worship God in the ways the nations served theirs, and no one may teach such a day as God’s command, nor teach its avoidance as God’s command where Scripture does not command it (Romans 14:5; 14:6; 14:13; 1 Corinthians 10:21; 10:25; 10:26; Mark 7:7; Colossians 2:21). Read the other way: Exodus 32:5; Deuteronomy 12:30–32; Jeremiah 10:2–5; Galatians 4:8–10; 2 Corinthians 6:14–17; Ephesians 5:11; 1 Kings 12:32–33; 1 Corinthians 10:28–29; Acts 15:29. Confidence: Solid. Scripture never names these days. Romans 14:5–6 speaks of days without naming them, and Colossians 2:16 of the Law’s feast days; applying them to days Scripture does not command is our step, with 1 Corinthians 10:25–26 for things once used for idols. Scripture plainly forbids worshipping other gods, sorcery and consulting the dead, on any day (1 Corinthians 10:20–21; Galatians 5:20; Isaiah 8:19). Deuteronomy 12:30–31 is the text that presses closest; its own reason is what the nations did to their gods (Deuteronomy 12:31), and our step is to draw the line where that reason puts it — at worship itself, not at things once used in it.

Whether salvation depends on these questions. Our conclusion: salvation depends on believing the good news about Jesus and remaining in his teaching. It does not depend on settling every question in this document (John 8:24). Read the other way: John 8:24; 1 John 2:23; Galatians 1:9. Confidence: Solid. John names the belief he requires: “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). John’s denial is denying that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22), and his test of teaching is the confession that Jesus Christ came in the flesh (2 John 7, 9). Galatians 1:9 curses a rival good news, not an unsettled question; Romans 14:1 shows that not every question divides.

What Scripture does not say. Scripture does not say that the covenant at Sinai still binds those who are in Christ, or that keeping its Sabbath, its feasts, or its food laws is required to be right with God. It does not say that a believer who does not keep the weekly Sabbath is therefore not Christ's, or that the commands of Jesus and his apostles are a lesser binding than the commands given through Moses. It does not say that obedience is optional, or that being under grace makes sin a small thing. And it does not discard a single word of the law as Scripture: the texts stand, are read, and are profitable — where we say the law does not bind as a covenant, it is because the apostles say its custody reached its goal in Christ, not because any word of God has failed. Where Scripture is silent, we do not build.

“The secret things belong to Yahweh our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Where We Stand

Scripture says

  • A man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ — stated three times in one verse (Galatians 2:16).
  • “You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.” (Galatians 5:4)
  • The law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ; now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor (Galatians 3:24–25).
  • You are not under law, but under grace (Romans 6:14).
  • Believers were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, and have been discharged from the law, to serve in newness of the Spirit (Romans 7:4, 6).
  • Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4).
  • Let no one judge you with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day; these are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is Christ's (Colossians 2:16–17).
  • The apostles refused to put a yoke on the disciples which neither their fathers nor they were able to bear, and laid no greater burden than the necessary things (Acts 15:10, 28).
  • “In that he says, ‘A new covenant’, he has made the first obsolete.” (Hebrews 8:13)
  • The whole law and the prophets depend on two commandments: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40).
  • “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)

We conclude

  • Our conclusion: the law of Moses, as a covenant, does not bind believers in Christ; justification is by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law (Galatians 2:16; Romans 6:14).
  • Our conclusion: believers are not lawless — they are bound by the law of Christ: love, and the commands Jesus and the apostles gave (Galatians 6:2; Matthew 22:37–40; 1 Corinthians 9:21).
  • Our conclusion: the weekly Sabbath stands among the shadows of the old covenant (Colossians 2:16–17); days are left to each believer's own assurance, and no one may judge another over them (Romans 14:5–6).

Hope

The freedom of this article is not freedom from God; it is freedom for the life the law always pointed to. “Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1). “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1). “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.” (Romans 8:2). The law itself is not the enemy of this hope — it was the tutor that brought us to the Teacher, and its pages still teach us God's holiness every time we open them. But the ground under the believer's feet is not his keeping; it is Christ's — and the man who rests on that ground obeys, gladly and completely, the Lord who set him free: bear a brother's burden this week, and you will have fulfilled the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).

Open the text. Read it in context. Keep what's true.

Living It Out

These are applications, offered as invitations.

  • Read Galatians 2:15–21 aloud this week, and count how many times Paul puts justification by faith against justification by the law's works — then thank God for the ground you stand on.
  • When you are told that a command binds your conscience, ask the quiet question of this series: which covenant does it stand in, and where did the apostles lay it on the churches? — remembering that the commands Jesus himself gave bind in full, whether or not an apostle lists them again, for he commanded that his disciples be taught to observe all that he commanded (Matthew 28:20).
  • Fulfill the law of Christ concretely: bear one person's burden this week — a load carried, a debt of kindness paid, a hard conversation had in love (Galatians 6:2).
  • If you observe a day to the Lord, observe it without judging the brother who does not; if you do not, receive the brother who does — both are to the Lord (Romans 14:5–6).
  • Pray for those who taught you that your acceptance rests on your keeping — many taught in sincerity what they themselves were taught — and for the teachers of the law who will read these pages.

Questions for Reflection

  1. How many times does Galatians 2:16 deny justification by the works of the law, and what does Galatians 5:4 call the attempt to be justified by the law? (See Not Justified by the Works of the Law.)
  2. In the exchange with the rich young ruler, where does Jesus' answer finally point the man — and why does that matter? (See The strongest objection under Not Justified by the Works of the Law.)
  3. What office does Paul give the law in Galatians 3:24, and what has happened now that faith has come? (See No Longer Under a Tutor.)
  4. How does the answer to Matthew 5:17–19 grant Jesus' words their full force without freezing the law's custody? (See The strongest objection under No Longer Under a Tutor.)
  5. What word does Peter use for the law laid on disciples, and what did the council lay on the Gentile believers instead? (See The Council Would Not Lay the Yoke.)
  6. Why does the word perpetual in Exodus 31:16 not settle the Sabbath question? (See The strongest objection under Shadows, and the Substance.)
  7. What is the law of Christ, and what commandments bind the believer now? (See Bound by the Law of Christ.)
  8. What is the opposite ditch this article refuses, and where does Paul refuse it? (See The opposite ditch under Bound by the Law of Christ.)

Check It Yourself

  • Opening: Galatians 2:16; 5:4.
  • Not justified by the law: Galatians 2:15–21; 3:10–14; 5:2–6; Romans 3:19–21.
  • No longer under the tutor: Galatians 3:24–25; 4:4–5; Romans 6:14; 7:4–6; 10:4; Hebrews 8:13; Ephesians 2:15.
  • The council's answer: Acts 15:1, 5, 7–11, 19–21, 24, 28–29; 21:20, 24–25; Leviticus 17–18; 1 Corinthians 9:20.
  • Sabbath and days: Genesis 2:3; Exodus 20:8–11; 29:9; 31:16–17; Leviticus 23:2–3, 38; Mark 2:27–28; Hosea 2:11; Ezekiel 45:17; Colossians 2:16–17; Romans 14:5–6; Hebrews 4:3–4, 8–10; 7:12.
  • Establishing the law: Romans 3:19–21, 31; 13:8–10; Psalm 119:89, 97, 160.
  • The commands that bind now: Matthew 22:37–40; John 14:15; 15:12–14; 1 John 2:3–4; 3:23; 5:2–3; Galatians 5:13–14; 6:2; 1 Corinthians 9:21.
  • Not lawless: Romans 6:1–2, 15; Titus 2:11–12.
  • The holders' texts answered: Matthew 5:17–19; 19:16–22; Exodus 20:8–11; Mark 2:27–28; 1 John 5:2–3; Revelation 14:12.
  • Answered: Statement of Faith, section 15.
  • Hope: Galatians 5:1; Romans 8:1–2.

Next

Next in Test the Teaching: God Has Not Rejected Israel. If the first covenant is obsolete, what of the people to whom it was given — has God finished with Israel, or do his gifts and his calling stand?

Previous article: Every Believer Is God's Child
Next article: God Has Not Rejected Israel
Study guide: Study Guide: Not by Keeping the Law
Series: All 9 articles in Test the Teaching

© 2026 Elvis Lucas, Open the Text. Original: https://openthetext.com/series/test-the-teaching/06-not-by-keeping-the-law/
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