Chapter # 10 Paragraph # 1 Study # 5
July 1, 2018
Humble, Texas
(056)
1769 Translation:
4 For Christ [
is] the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
1901 ASV Translation:
4 For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.
- I. The Believer's Confidence.
- A. This raises the issue of the phrase "to every one that believeth".
- 1. In a sense, Luke tossed a monkey wrench into the issue of "believing" in his record of Jesus' explanation of the parable of the soils in Luke 8:13. Paul's terminology in the text before us involves the present tense of the participle translated "believeth". This means that he is declaring that, for the person who is believing, Christ is the end of "Law". In Luke's explanation, he posits the reality that some only "believe for a while" but then "fall away". Hebrews 3:12 is a clear warning that "falling away" is a deadly act (the author of Hebrews uses the same word that Luke used). Jesus told Peter that he was to be "sifted as wheat" but that Jesus had prayed for him that "his faith fail not". Thus, the "failure" of faith was what Satan seeks among the children of men and not for no reason; Jesus does not "pray" (determined, desperate) for insignificant things.
- 2. The only really legitimate conclusion is that man's "believing" is an issue with a continuum that has a beginning point (that does not bring about "justification"), an on-going process of growth in both insight and "belief" (that, at some point, does result in "justification"), and a final culmination when the promise is fulfilled in the history of him who "believes". For Paul, there is no "failure" of faith among the elect of God because Jesus does for us as He did for Peter (Hebrews 7:25). According to this text in Hebrews, it is the fact that Jesus "ever lives to make intercession" that makes Him capable of "saving to the uttermost" those who come to the Father by the Son. Thus, it is not their determination, nor effort in "faith" that is salvaged from sifting; it is His prayer that moves the Father to sustain their "faith".
- 3. Thus, Paul is not promising that Christ is the end of "Law" to him that "had believed, but ceased"; he is declaring that Christ is the end of "Law" to everyone whose "believing" is current.
- 4. This doctrinal reality does not compromise the truth of the Gospel, but it does clearly deny the notion that "belief" without "believing" will save. This is why there are multiple "if you continue" statements at critical points in the Scriptures that exist because of this truth. One of the most notable is 1 Corinthians 15:2 where Paul insisted that "if ye keep in memory" and "belief in vain" are integral parts of the issues of "the Gospel which I preached unto you".
