What does the Bible say about purpose of the law?
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The Bible teaches that God’s law reveals his holy character, exposes human sin, restrains evil, and leads sinners to see their need of Christ, but it cannot justify or save them. Romans 7:7 says the law makes sin known, while Galatians 3:24 calls it a guardian leading us to Christ. The law is good and fulfilled, not abolished, by Jesus in Matthew 5:17. Because breaking one command makes us guilty before God, as James 2:10 teaches, no one can be justified by works of the law. Yet believers, saved by grace through faith, are freed from the law’s condemnation and called to walk in its moral guidance as the law of liberty.
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Rankings: OpenBible.info Topical Bible (CC BY) · Scripture: World English Bible
- Romans 7:7
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be! However, I wouldn't have known sin, except through the law. For I wouldn't have known coveting, unless the law had said, "You shall not covet."
- Galatians 3:24
So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
- Matthew 5:17
"Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill.
- James 2:10
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he has become guilty of all.
- Galatians 3:19
What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
- Galatians 3:21
Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most assuredly righteousness would have been of the law.
- James 2:12
So speak, and so do, as men who are to be judged by a law of freedom.
- Romans 6:14
For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
- Ephesians 2:8-9
[8] for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, [9] not of works, that no one would boast.
- Galatians 2:16
yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through the faith of 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.
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