Online Bible Study - Foundations of Faith

Law and Gospel

St. Paul, the great Apostle of God, makes this very clear in his letter to the Romans where we read, "All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous" (Rom. 2:11-13).

Yes, God's Law tells us, in no uncertain terms, that we have sinned. Again we read in Romans 7:5-7, "For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the Law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say, then? Is the Law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the Law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the Law had not said, 'Do not covet.'"

Think about your own life. Do you do wrong things, bad things or fail to do the right things? Certainly, we all do! However, the Law of God is a good schoolmaster. It teaches the right things and helps us to learn how to live holy lives.

In the third important teaching we learn that the Law is made known in all the places in the Bible where God tells us what we are supposed to do and what we must not do.

In Romans 2:14-15 we learned that God first gave His Law by writing it into the hearts of Adam and Eve, and since then, into the hearts of all persons through their genetic structure. Here again we refer to these clear words of God, "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature things required by the Law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the Law, since they show that the requirements of the Law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them" (Romans 2:14-15).

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