Part 2 — IF WE ARE SAVED BY FAITH, WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LAW?

From Abraham to Adam, and from Adam to Christ

Part 1 ended with Paul moving from Abraham to Adam—and from Adam to Christ.

But before we follow Paul into that comparison, there are two things we need to notice about faith itself.

God Remains Faithful

Paul's argument raises another question.

If Israel has been entrusted with the oracles of God, what happens when some of God's covenant people do not believe?

Does their unbelief mean God's promises have failed?

Paul's answer is emphatic:

“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.”— Romans 3:3–4

Notice what Paul does not say.

He does not say that unbelief doesn't matter.

He does not say that covenant privilege automatically produces righteousness.

And he does not say that God's faithfulness depends upon Israel's faithfulness.

Instead, he establishes something fundamental:

God remains faithful even when human beings are not.

The failure is never on God's side.

And that prepares us for Paul's next step.

The question is no longer whether God has been faithful.

The question is whether humanity—Jew and Gentile alike—has been faithful to God.

And Paul's answer is devastating:

“There is none righteous, no, not one.”— Romans 3:10

And then Paul has already told us what the law does:

“For by the law is the knowledge of sin.”— Romans 3:20

Now the law has done its work.

It has exposed the problem.

Faith Is More Than a Past Decision

This brings us back to Abraham.

Paul does not present Abraham's faith as merely a moment in the past.

He says circumcision was given to Abraham:

“a sign, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised.”— Romans 4:11

And then Paul explains why Abraham became the father of the uncircumcised:

“that he might be the father of all them that believe.”

But Paul doesn't stop with believing.

He also describes those who:

“walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.”— Romans 4:12

That is important.

Paul's model contains both:

Faith → righteousness

and

Faith → a continuing walk.

This does not turn the walk into the basis of righteousness.

Abraham was counted righteous before circumcision.

But neither does Paul separate faith from the life that faith produces.

Faith receives righteousness.Faith continues to walk.

And now we can return to where Paul takes us next.

He has moved from Abraham to Adam.

And now he places Adam and Christ side by side.

12. THE ONE MAN AND THE MANY

Romans 5:18 takes Paul's argument one step further.

Paul writes:

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”— Romans 5:18

Notice the parallel.

One man.

One act.

All affected.

Adam's trespass did not remain confined to Adam. It affected the human race.

And Paul places Christ on the other side of the comparison.

One man's offense brought condemnation.

One righteous act brings justification leading to life.

This is not accidental language.

Paul is explaining something fundamental about humanity.

What happened through Adam did not remain confined to Adam.

Likewise, what Christ accomplished does not remain confined to Christ.

Christ came as the Second Adam.

Paul is therefore not merely comparing two individuals.

He is comparing two corporate heads.

Adam represents humanity under the reign of sin and death.

Christ represents humanity under the reign of grace and life.

Paul makes the comparison even clearer in the next verse:

“For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”— Romans 5:19

There it is.

Adam: disobedience.

Christ: obedience.

Adam: many made sinners.

Christ: many made righteous.

The point is not simply that Adam did something bad and Jesus did something good.

Paul is describing what flows from two corporate heads.

And this helps us understand what Paul has been saying since Romans 3.

When he says that righteousness comes through faith apart from works of law, he is not introducing a new method by which individuals can manufacture righteousness for themselves.

He is announcing what God has accomplished in Christ.

The question is no longer:

“What can I do to become righteous?”

The question becomes:

“What has God done in Christ?”

Romans 4 brought us to Abraham.

Romans 5 takes us even further back.

Before Moses, there was Abraham.

And now:

Before Abraham, there was Adam.

Paul is moving backward through salvation history until he reaches the beginning of the human problem.

And when he reaches Adam, he shows us why Christ came as another Adam.

13. THE LAW ENTERS THE STORY

Now Paul says something remarkable:

“Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound.”— Romans 5:20

At first glance, that sounds strange.

If the law is good, why would its arrival cause the trespass to increase?

But Paul has already explained the law's function.

The law does not create the sinfulness of the human heart.

It exposes it.

Paul demonstrated this personally in Romans 7:

“I had not known sin, but by the law.”

And then he gives a specific example:

“For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”

Why choose coveting?

Because coveting reaches beneath outward behavior into the heart.

You can control an action and still harbor the desire.

The command exposes something deeper.

Thought. Desire. Motivation. Word. Deed.

The law shines its light into the whole person.

And when the light comes on, we discover something uncomfortable:

The problem was never God's standard.

The problem was us.

Paul therefore concludes:

“Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”— Romans 7:12

The law is not the problem.

Sin is the problem.

The law reveals it.

The law exposes it.

The law removes our excuses.

And it removes boasting.

That is why Romans 3:31 matters so much.

Paul did not say that faith makes the law irrelevant.

He said:

“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

Faith does not overthrow what the law has revealed.

It establishes it.

The law says:

You cannot establish your own righteousness.

The Gospel says:

God has provided righteousness in Christ.

The law exposes the problem.

The Gospel reveals the solution.

And Christ is the center of both.

But Paul isn't finished.

Romans 5:20 continues:

“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”

And then Paul tells us where this leads:

“That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”— Romans 5:21

Now the entire argument is coming into focus.

Sin reigns in death.

Grace reigns through righteousness.

And the result is:

eternal life through Jesus Christ.

The Gospel is not merely about making sinners feel forgiven.

God's answer reaches all the way to the problem Paul identified at the beginning:

sin and death.

And this is precisely why the Adam/Christ comparison matters.

14. THE TWO ADAMS

Paul does not develop this idea only in Romans. He returns to it in 1 Corinthians 15, where he makes the connection between Adam, Christ, death, resurrection, and life even more explicit.

He writes:

“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”— 1 Corinthians 15:21

Then he makes the parallel unmistakable:

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”— 1 Corinthians 15:22

There is the same pattern we saw in Romans.

Adam → death.Christ → life.

Paul is not simply comparing two individuals. He is showing what comes to humanity through two corporate heads.

And Paul develops this comparison even further:

“But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.”— 1 Corinthians 15:23

Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. His resurrection is not an isolated event. It is the beginning of the resurrection life that will ultimately be manifested in those who belong to Him.

Then Paul goes back to the beginning:

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”— 1 Corinthians 15:45

Notice the language.

The first man Adam. The last Adam.

Adam received life.

Christ is life-giving.

Paul is deliberately placing Christ in the position of Adam—not as another fallen human being repeating Adam's failure, but as the last Adam, the One through whom God brings humanity into the life Adam could not secure.

Paul continues:

“Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.”— 1 Corinthians 15:46

And then:

“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.”— 1 Corinthians 15:47

There are two men.

The first man—Adam. The second man—Christ.

And Paul says something remarkable about those who belong to Christ:

“As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.”— 1 Corinthians 15:48

Then:

“And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”— 1 Corinthians 15:49

Now the Gospel comes into sharper focus.

Christ did not come merely to improve Adam's performance.

He came to bring humanity into something Adam could never provide:

life.

The problem is not simply that human beings have broken rules. The problem is that humanity is under the reign of sin and death.

That is exactly what Paul has already established in Romans:

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men...”— Romans 5:12

And then, after tracing the consequences of Adam's trespass, Paul gives us the other side of the equation:

“For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.”— Romans 5:17

There it is again.

One man. One humanity. One reign.

Adam's trespass brought the reign of death.

Christ brings the reign of life.

And Paul brings the two sides together:

“For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”— Romans 5:19

This is why the Adam/Christ comparison matters so much.

The Gospel is bigger than the question, “How can I get forgiven for what I have done?”

Paul takes us deeper.

What happened to humanity in Adam?

And what has God done for humanity in Christ?

Adam explains the human problem.

Christ reveals God's answer.

Adam brings death.

Christ brings life.

Adam's disobedience affects the many.

Christ's obedience brings righteousness to the many.

And this is why Paul can speak about righteousness as something revealed and provided by God, rather than something humanity manufactures through its own performance.

The question is no longer simply:

“What can I do to become righteous?”

The Gospel asks a much deeper question:

“What has God done in Christ?”

Romans 4 brought us to Abraham.

Romans 5 takes us even further back.

Before Moses, there was Abraham.

And now:

Before Abraham, there was Adam.

Paul is moving backward through salvation history until he reaches the beginning of the human problem.

And when he reaches Adam, he shows us why Christ came as another Adam—the last Adam.

The Gospel is not merely God changing His attitude toward sinners.

It is the announcement of what God has accomplished in Christ to bring humanity from death to life.

And now we are ready to return to the question that started this entire study:

If we are justified by faith apart from works of law, how does faith establish the law?

15. SO HOW DOES FAITH ESTABLISH THE LAW?

Now we can finally return to where we began.

Romans 3:31:

“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

After following Paul's argument from Romans 1 through Romans 5, we can finally hear the force of Paul's question.

Paul is not asking whether faith gives us permission to ignore God's commandments.

His audience knew the law.

Paul has just spent the preceding chapters showing that no human being can be justified by works of law. Righteousness is revealed apart from the law and received through faith.

So Paul anticipates the obvious question:

If God justifies sinners apart from works of the law, does that mean God has made His own law void in order to save them?

Or, stated even more directly:

Did God have to violate His own law in order to save humanity?

Paul's answer is emphatic:

“God forbid.”

Absolutely not.

That would be unthinkable.

God does not save humanity by declaring His own standard meaningless. He does not save by pretending sin does not matter. He does not set righteousness aside in order to show mercy.

And this is exactly why Paul had already said:

“That he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”— Romans 3:26

God is just.

And God justifies.

Those two truths stand together.

The Gospel does not require God to choose between His righteousness and His mercy.

God remains righteous while justifying sinners.

And that is how faith establishes the law.

But we need to be very careful here.

Faith does not establish the law by making human beings capable of earning righteousness through better performance.

Nor does faith establish the law by turning the Gospel into another system of law-keeping.

Rather, the Gospel demonstrates that God did not have to violate His own righteousness in order to save us.

And there is another misunderstanding we must avoid.

Paul is not saying that Christ saves us from our past sins and then leaves us to establish the law through our Spirit-empowered performance.

That would turn:

Christ + faith

into:

Christ + me.

It would make our obedience part of the foundation upon which the law is finally vindicated.

But that is not Paul's argument in Romans 3.

Paul is not saying:

“Christ has done His part. Now you must do yours.”

He is saying:

God has done what humanity could not do.

The righteousness we could never produce has been revealed in Christ.

The salvation we could never accomplish has been accomplished by Christ.

And the law that appears to be threatened by righteousness through faith is not violated by the Gospel.

It is established by what God has done in Christ.

Our obedience does not complete Christ's work.

Our law-keeping does not make God's justification more righteous.

And we do not become the ones who finally make the law stand.

Christ is not half of the Gospel.

He is the Gospel.

The Christian life matters. The Spirit transforms the believer. Faith produces a changed life. But that transformed life is the fruit of salvation, not the missing portion of Christ's accomplishment.

Paul's question here is not:

“Can believers keep the law?”

His question is:

“Does God's way of justifying sinners make God's law void?”

And his answer is:

“God forbid.”

The law was not wrong.

God did not abandon it.

God did not lower the standard.

God provided the answer in Christ.

Abraham demonstrates it.

Adam explains why humanity needs it.

Christ reveals what God has done about it.

And faith receives it.

So when Paul says that we are justified by faith apart from works of law, he is not throwing the law away.

He is showing us that the law was never the means by which sinful humanity could manufacture righteousness in the first place.

The law cannot save.

But that does not make the law meaningless.

It reveals sin.

It exposes self-righteousness.

It establishes God's standard.

And it tells the truth about the human condition.

The Gospel does not say:

“The law doesn't matter.”

Nor does it say:

“Try harder and eventually you will become righteous.”

It says something far more profound:

God has acted.

Christ has come.

Righteousness has been revealed.

Grace has been given.

And faith receives what God has accomplished.

And that is why Paul's conclusion is so powerful.

Faith does not make the law void.

It establishes it.

Because the Gospel does not save humanity by pretending the law was wrong.

The Gospel saves humanity while demonstrating that God Himself is righteous.

So there is no contradiction between:

justified by faith apart from works of law

and

faith establishes the law.

In fact, the second statement is the necessary answer to the first.

If righteousness comes through faith, God has not abandoned His law.

If sinners are justified by grace, God has not compromised His righteousness.

If Christ has accomplished salvation, God has not had to violate His own character to save us.

God remains just.

God remains righteous.

And God saves.

That is why Paul says:

“God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”