Serious question! “Do we then make void the law through faith?” Whoever makes void the law makes God void, for the law is of God. The law is the revelation of God in his perfect justice. The law reveals that God is God and that God alone is to be served, worshiped, and glorified with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; and the law teaches that for God’s sake you must love your neighbor as yourself. The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. The law teaches that God rewards every man according as his work shall be: to the perfect, perfection; to the contentious and disobedient, indignation and wrath! For God is God.

Do we make the law void? Do we strip the law of all meaning, make it worthless, and empty it of all power to teach and to instruct? For then, we do the same to God, because the law is his oracle.

Such is the charge against the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is what the apostle means by the word “faith.” He means that you are righteous before God and worthy of eternal life wholly apart from a consideration of your deeds, activities, or good works. He means that your good works cannot add to your righteousness and that your sins cannot take away from your righteousness. He means that you are not under law, so that the law cannot say, “You must do this in order to live.” And the law cannot say, “You must not do that in order to live.” The law cannot curse you for not keeping it. The law cannot bless you for keeping it.

Do we make void the law by that doctrine? God forbid! Let it never be suggested for one moment that such is the case.

Rather, we establish the law! Only the doctrine of justification by faith alone does justice to the law as the law of God. Only that doctrine teaches that the law has been fully and completely satisfied in its righteous demand, so that also God has been fully and completely satisfied in his righteous demand.

For the doctrine of faith teaches Christ. The doctrine of faith does not teach what you must do to be saved. The doctrine of faith teaches what Christ has done to save you. The doctrine of faith teaches that Jesus Christ as the onlybegotten Son of God assumed our flesh and was born of a woman and made under the law to redeem us from the curse of the law. That God might be God! That God receive his due! That God’s people might be redeemed and their righteousness might be a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a righteousness of the Son of God, whereby they are exalted not only above all the judgments of men but also above all the judgments of the law. The law cannot curse or condemn you—not because the law was made void but because God’s justice revealed in the law was satisfied by God in Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah!