Salvation by law is the position that we are required to have first obeyed God's law in order to become saved as the result as through it were earned as a wage. Our salvation is from sin (Matthew 1:21) and sin is the transgression of God's law (John 3:4), so while we do not earn our salvation by obeying it, living in obedience to it through faith in Jesus is nevertheless intrinsically part of the concept of him saving us from not living in obedience to it.
Our salvation is not just from Sin but also from the Law as a system. That is transparently clear from Paul in Galatians.
Gal 3.2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?
The entire purpose of the Law, according to Paul, was to show Israel that man, apart from Christian redemption, could not achieve atonement for sin, apart from Christian Grace. This would amount to an effort by the "flesh" to obtain self-atonement, once Christ had already achieved that for which the Law had really come!
The purpose of the Law was to get Israel to *live in Christ* once he had come. To remain in the Law would be to ignore God's final word on redemption. The Law was just a temporary word from God leading to His final word on redemption.
John said that Sin is the transgression of the Law, not at all meaning that transgressing the Law is solely the source of Sin. On the contrary, Paul argued that Sin preexisted the Law, meaning that God's Law preceded the Law of Moses.
Rom 5.12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given.
And Israel's Sin, as defined under the Law, was purely an example of what the whole Human Race does without the Law. We all transgress God's Law from the beginning, which was not the Law of Moses, but rather, the Law of living in God's Image.
Rom 3.19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
God does not put His people under bondage, but rather He frees us from bondage and His law is of freedom (Psalms 119:45).
The Law did liberate Israel from the curses that came down upon them when they failed under the Law. But they were still bound by the 613 commands or so of the Law. And Paul said that was a bondage that Christ now has freed us from in order to free us from its condemnation.
We are freed from both the Law and its condemnation when we choose to live in Christ now that he has come. We have no need to portray a need for redemption through the rituals of the Law when we have freedom from condemnation by living in Christ.
Gal 6.12 Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh. 14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
What Paul means here is the same that Jesus meant. Jesus warned that Pharisees would use the traditions of the Law as a self-effort to obtain Salvation in order to bind them in submission to themselves. To be "crucified with Christ" is to let go of self-will or living independent of God. We are crucifying the pagan world for ourselves, and allowing ourselves to be crucified, along with our independent will, so that we do not live in a carnal way.
Laws do not achieve "spiritual submission" to Christ! They are just a tool of men to get us to conform to a tradition they themselves are hoping to establish.
If God freed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt in order to put them under bondage to His law, then it would be for bondage that God sets us free, however, Galatians 5:1 says that it is for freedom that God sets us free. In Psalms 119:142, the Mosaic Law is truth, and in John 8:31-36, it is sin in transgression of the Mosaic Law that puts us in bondage while it is the truth that sets us free, so I do not want to put anyone under bondage, but rather I want people to be free from it. Christ is God's word made flesh, so the way to place a complete trust in Christ is by obeying God's word while it is contradicts to think that we should trust in God for salvation, but that we should not trust in what He has instructed for salvation.
You are conflating OT and NT truth. Christ, under the Law, wanted Israel to be free from the bondage of sin in their lives, which is indeed a bondage when men do not rely upon the Spirit of God for their righteousness. There is a vacuum in our lives, and we must either turn to God's word in our conscience or to our own independent ways, which are enslaved to Sin.
Obedience to God's law has nothing to do with needing to have a good enough performance. Christ spent his ministry teaching his followers how to obey the Mosaic Law by word and by example and the way to follow him is not by refusing to follow what he taught. In Psalms 119:29, he wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey the Mosaic Law, so that is what it means to be under grace.
Although Christ indeed wanted men to live properly under the Law while that system was still in effect, he also anticipated a time when men would no longer "worship in Jerusalem" or "at the temple." And so, Jesus promoted righteousness both while the Law remained in effect and after the cross would end all human efforts to be justified under the Law.
The Law was never designed to promote a "self-effort" at justifying one's self. Rather, it was designed to show the futility of that effort, by showing not just the need to live by God's Spirit but also to show that final redemption could only come by the perfect man, Jesus. We must live in him, and no longer under the Law, which was a temporary system.
Gal 3.19 Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.
In Psalms 119:160, all of God's righteous laws are eternal, which is black and white. In Romans 3:31, Paul said that our faith does not abolish our need to obey God's law, but rather our faith upholds it, again black and white.
That is a complete misrepresentation of Paul's words and theology, which clearly saw an "expiration date" on the Law of Moses, which was at the Cross where Jesus said, "It is finished." No more temple, no more priesthood, no more sacrifice.
Just Christ. Just like at the Transfiguration. Don't listen to Elijah, don't listen to Moses--just listen to Jesus.
My goal is to teach in accordance with what Paul taught and it is absurd to think that he considered teaching obedience to God's commands in accordance with following Christ's example to be heresy, but rather he delighted in obeying the Mosaic Law (Romans 7:22).
Unfortunately, you've been misled and need to get back to "Christ alone," if you have even ever been there! My interest is in your spiritual wholeness. And I want others to not be distracted by a "return to the Law" and to experience unbridled spiritual wholeness, as well.
Indeed, the Mosaic Covenant is a marriage between God and Israel, which means that the Mosaic Law is God's instructions for how to have an intimate relationship with Him. Some people kept the Mosaic Covenant while others did not, but that does not change the eternal way to have an intimate relationship with God. The problem was not with God's instructions for how to have an intimate relationship with Him, but with people not following those instructions, so the salutation to the problem was to make the New Covenant, where God would put the Mosaic Law in our minds and write it on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), where he would take away our hearts of stone, give us hearts of flesh, and send His Spirit to lead us to obey the Mosaic Law (Ezekiel 36:26-27), and where he would send His Son to free us from sin so that we might be free to obey the Mosaic Law and fulfill its righteous requirement (Romans 8:3-4). Christians grace is God teaching us to obey the Mosaic Law (Psalms 119:29, Exodus 33:13, Genesis 6:8-9, Romans 1:5, Titus 2:11-14). By all means please back up what you are saying by citing where the Bible states them, and if you think that I've misinterpreted the verses that I've cited, then please explain why.
I never said God had a problem with the Covenant of Law working! I agree--the problem was with Israel's sin and failure to keep God's laws.
But it was not just their failure to keep God's word under the Law. It was the human problem of failure to keep God's law to their heart, to live in God's image. It was a spirituality problem, a spirituality vs. carnality problem--the need to be spiritually born again.
Sin is not restricted to the Law--the Law was only given to Israel. But the Law was given to Israel to show the whole world the problem of human sin, which is failure to live by God's word in our conscience.
The "new heart" prophecy only confuses the matter, and distracts these issues. Any example of grace, OT or NT, requires that men adopt a new attitude, a new mind, and a new heart--essentially, a new spirituality. Any time Israel truly repented, they "changed their heart." They went from being carnal, or living by their own will, to living in partnership with God, drawing exclusively upon His spirituality.
The Law was a temporary system that was indeed "spiritual" and "according to God's word" as long as that system remained in effect and was not yet fulfilled. Once Christ fulfilled that system by replacing it with its eternal fulfillment, following the Law became a carnal system just like any pagan system. It came to be a matter of ignoring God's word of redemption in our conscience. Even Nicodemus, under the OT system of Law, should have known this!
What the prophecy of the "new heart" really says, and the part that is significant, is that it says a brand *new* covenant would replace the previous covenant of Law...
Jer 31.31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
Grace is not a return to the Law such as when people made an error under the Law and reconciled with God under prescription of the Law. Neither is Grace a restoration of the Law after that system has been destroyed.
Under Zerubbabel the temple was rebuilt by God's grace, but that was not NT Grace. That was an example of grace under the OT era, in which NT Grace had yet to be fulfilled.
NT Grace is the complete replacement of the Law as a system. It is the complete replacement of the Law even after it had temporarily been restored under the OT means of grace. What it is replaced with is the NT system that Christ alone provides.
Here there are no laws of Moses. Those laws project the morality and the spirituality of God, which are eternal. But as a system, it could not rely upon Israel's observance, which is what that Covenant required.
So the NT system is based upon Christ's observance and fulfillment alone. He fulfilled what was alluded to under the Old Covenant, that only Christ's observance could fulfill for eternity God's covenant with Israel. But there is the same Law of God and spirituality of God that was required of Man from the beginning, to live in His image and to respond to His word in our conscience.
Jesus said that man-inspired traditions bind men to those rules and keep them in their sins. Paul reflected the same by claiming that returning to the Law, now that the Law is gone, binds men to man-inspired traditions, and does not free them from their Sin Nature.
Gal 3.18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
19 Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.
At one time the tradition of the Law was beautiful and perfect, but that was in its time, when the word of God required that in the moment. But it was always ever meant to lead to an *eternal fulfillment,* which only comes by living in Christ. To ignore that word to our heart is Sin, just as it was in the beginning and as it was under the Law. We dare not ignore the word of Christ to our hearts!
