⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. ⁵ For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness.

The end of human effort to gain righteousness by keeping God’s law has arrived! Does it make sense? Not to the person still living with the fallen mindset that Adam and Eve espoused, namely that they could do it on their own without God’s help. Their inaccurate worldview extended not just to eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden, but to a self-centered view of life itself. Once sin entered into the world, so did unrighteousness. Humans were no longer right with God, and the quest to regain that righteous status began. In the children of Adam and Eve, the awareness of that need was apparent in that they both brought offerings to God (Gen 4:3-4).

In time, God gave a detailed outline of the requirements of righteousness, which came directly from God on Mount Sinai by means of stone tablets. This Law of Moses was designed to show the impossibly high standard of righteousness that God requires, a standard befitting His own righteousness. But it had to be kept in its entirety. The apostle James put it this way: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10). The Law was to govern all of life, no exceptions. A chain with a missing link is a broken chain, whether that missing link is large or small. The Law of God, broken in large ways or small ways, is broken either way. A person who breaks the Law of righteousness in any area, in any way, is shown to be unrighteous!

Although a fallen human refuses to admit failure, sin is systemic and pervasive. Fallen people are fallen to the core, unrighteous at the deepest levels, to the point that one must admit, “I am a sinner in my very being—that is who I am.” The Law was not wrong; it simply undercut all human exertions to gain God’s level of righteousness. Fallen humans do not recognize this.

God let that ignorance continue throughout the Old Testament time period, with only a few being able to see past it to God’s grace and mercy (see, for example, David’s reflection of Psalm 32). What hope is there, then, if our efforts cannot possibly bring us righteousness before God? Now He has given us the solution to that dilemma. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” The word “end” has the sense of bringing to fulfillment, completion. As the NLT puts it, “Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given.” Therein is our hope for righteousness.

Lord, I look to Christ alone as my source of righteousness.