Figure 8-1: In relational terms, the Christian is “dead to” the death curse of God’s law and “alive to” God’s grace.

You were born under the death curse of God’s judicial law because you had a sinful nature (the moral essence of the life you inherited from Adam). As if that were not enough, your sinful nature quickly drove you into conduct that violated the law and also subjected you to the law’s death penalty. However, the law’s death sentence had already been carried out in you: You were born spiritually dead and separated from God.

When you became a Christian, you were judicially forgiven of your sins—past, present, and future. Christ’s death on the cross paid the penalty for your sins. Paul writes that “In Him we have…the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Ephesians 1:7). And to the Colossians, he wrote: “you were dead in your transgressions,” and Jesus forgave us of “all our transgressions...canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13, 14).(1)

Christ died to redeem us from the curse of God’s judicial law, and through being crucified with Him, we died to the law:

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? (Romans 6:3).

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13).

You also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ...we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound (Romans 7:4, 6).

For through the law I died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me (Galatians 2:19, 20).

Christ died to satisfy the requirements of God’s judicial law for our sins (1 John 2:2; Galatians 3:13)—our inherent sin nature as well as our actual sins. At the time of salvation, every believer dies to the law and is released from its judicial authority over them (Romans 7:4, 6).

When we were saved by grace through faith, the primary purpose of the law was fulfilled; it had guided us to salvation in Christ: “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision [management] of the law” (Galatians 3:24, 25 NIV).

There is more biblical evidence to indicate why we are no longer under the law’s judicial authority:

1. God’s judicial law has no jurisdiction over the righteous in Christ. To “use the Law lawfully” (1 Timothy 1:8, 9), means to respond to it in the way God desires. Christ saved you from the law’s curse of death, and He also saved you to conformity unto the law. The law demands righteousness, and when you became a Christian, you were justified—made the ontological righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). God’s law, in the judicial sense, thereafter had no authority over you. However, in the filial sense, we use the law lawfully when we are motivated to obey out of love for Him.
   
   
2. God’s judicial law has jurisdiction only over those with natural (Adamic) life. The law’s authority is over those who are in Adam, not over those who have died to the law and now live in Christ. Those who are in Christ have eternal life and are under grace. There is a “higher law” or cause and effect principle here: The law or principle of love and life of Christ Jesus have set you free from the law or principle of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
   
   
3. The requirements of God’s law are met in Christians, who walk (live) in the Spirit (Romans 8:3, 4), and love God and their neighbors as Christ commanded: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

The “whole law” “depends” on—is based on—the two Greatest Commandments. If those two commandments are kept, the requirements of the whole law are met. For this reason, Paul would write, “Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:8, 10). God is love (1 John 4:8), and your being a child of God makes you a child of love. You love because it is your new nature to love—you are a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). And, since it is your nature to love, you ontologically fulfill the requirement of God’s law. And because you fulfill the law, it ceases to have jurisdiction over you; the law has authority only to condemn those who are positionally, relationally, and ontologically “under the law.”

“Establishing” God’s law
Paul writes that “we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (Galatians 3:24, 25), but asserts in Romans 3:31 that we “establish the Law.” Is this a contradiction?

Jesus provides the answer: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-39).

Love is both the ontological fulfillment of the law in believers (Romans 13:10) and, as Jesus taught, is the enabling motivation for obeying the law. God promised us a new heart, a “new spirit” of Christlike love, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, with the result being that those would “‘cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances’” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27).

The believer’s love and obedience are intended by God to be manifested one in the other: Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15), and “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love...” (John 15:10).

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(1) The purpose of God’s forgiveness is to remove debt on account of sin. This is sometimes called “sin-debt.” With the believer, this is accomplished by Christ’s completed work at the cross, and is manifested in two ways. First, at the time of salvation, the believer is pardoned from his debt due to sin—this is sometimes called judicial or salvific forgiveness, and it is a onetime event that never needs repeated. Second, God removes conditional sin-debt in the form of defiling “contents” from the believer’s soul (mind, emotion, and will)—such as feelings of guilt, shame, unworthiness, anxiety, depression, etc. This conditional cleansing is available to the believer at the time of salvation, and continues to apply throughout the believer’s mortal life. Whenever a believer sins, he accumulates some form of sin-debt in his soul. While such sins are “automatically” pardoned under judicial forgiveness, their defilement of the soul (sin-debt) must be dealt with by the believer and the Holy Spirit. This is accomplished through the filial or parental function of forgiveness, when the believer repents, confesses, and cleanses his soul, and when the Holy Spirit cleanses, heals, fills, and renews or restores the soul.

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