I Will Cause You to Walk

The claim that holiness does not come by keeping the law usually grows out of real experience. Someone has tried hard to be good. He has made resolutions, kept lists, and set his jaw, and still he has fallen back into the same sins. Out of that frustration comes a conclusion: “You cannot overcome sin by trying to keep the law again. You cannot become holier. That is not God’s way.”

There is truth in the first part of that conclusion, and Scripture says so. A person cannot overcome sin by keeping the law in his own strength. That is no modern discovery; it is the word of Romans 8:3.

But the claim goes one step further and says that holiness through keeping God’s commandments is not God’s way at all. That is the step to be tested, and we do not have to guess what God’s way is, because God has told us.

What the Law Could Not Do

Here is Romans 8:3 again, together with the verse that follows it, for Paul did not stop at the end of verse 3:

Romans 8:3-4 For what was impossible for the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) — in that it was weak through the sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) — God, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful sarx(flesh) and concerning sin, katakrino κατακρίνω kat-ak-ree'-no(condemned) sin in the sarx(flesh), so that the dikaioma δικαίωμα dik-ah'-yo-mah(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the sarx(flesh) but according to the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit).

Something was “impossible for the nomos(law),” and verse 3 gives the reason: “in that it was weak through the sarx(flesh).” The weakness lay not in the law but in the flesh through which the law had to work. As the last chapter showed, the law is holy and spiritual, and it is the flesh that fails.

Then God acted. He sent His own Son, and He “katakrino(condemned) sin in the sarx(flesh).”

The claim overlooks the purpose, which verse 4 supplies: “so that the dikaioma(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us.” Dikaioma (δικαίωμα) is a righteous requirement, an ordinance carried out. God sent His Son so that what the law requires would actually be done, in us, by those who walk “according to the pneuma(spirit).”

Romans 8:3, then, does not say that God gave up on the law being kept. It says the opposite. The law could not be kept through weak flesh, and so God dealt with sin in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in His people. The verse used to set the law aside turns out to be about the law at last being done.

Sheet Music and a Song by Heart

Picture a beginner sitting at a piano with a page of sheet music in front of him. The music is perfect, and every note on the page is right. But his hands are clumsy, he cannot read quickly enough, and the song keeps falling apart. The trouble lies not with the music but with the player.

Now imagine the same song learned so deeply that it lives in him. He no longer squints at the page but plays from memory, freely and with joy. What has not changed is the song itself. The notes did not get easier; they moved from the stand into the player.

That is the picture God gave through His prophets.

God’s Way, in His Own Words

This is how God described what He would do:

Ezekiel 36:27 And my spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) I will put within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke), and you shall keep my judgments (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt') and do them.

He puts His spirit within His people, and as a result they walk in His statutes and keep His judgments and do them. The Spirit is not given in place of the statutes. The Spirit is given so that the statutes will be walked in.

Jeremiah, describing the new covenant, says the same:

Jeremiah 31:33 For this is the covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth') that I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put My Torah within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

The word is Torah (תּוֹרָה), God’s instruction. What is written on the heart is neither a new law nor something other than the Torah. The letter to the Hebrews quotes this same promise when it speaks of the new covenant: “this is the diatheke διαθήκη dee-ath-ay'-kay(covenant) that I will make with the house of Israel” (Hebrews 8:8-10). The sheet music moves from the tablets of stone into the heart, and the song stays the same.

When the claim says that walking in God’s commandments is not God’s way, it reverses what God said His way would be. His way is not to remove the commandments but to write them where they will finally be kept.

Be Holy

The second part of the claim says, “You cannot become holier.” Peter had something to say about holiness:

1 Peter 1:15-16 but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy."

“Since it is written” tells us that Peter is quoting. The words “Be holy, for I am holy” come from Leviticus (Leviticus 11:44; 19:2). When an apostle wanted to tell believers what holiness looks like, he did not invent a new definition. He opened the Torah.

Leviticus 20 joins the same call to the keeping of His statutes:

Leviticus 20:7-8 And you shall sanctify yourselves, and you shall be holy, for I am the LORD your God. And you shall keep My statutes (chuqqot חֻקָּה khook-kaw') and do them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you.

These two verses hold together: “you shall sanctify yourselves,” “you shall keep My statutes (chuqqot) and do them,” and then, “I am the LORD who sanctifies you.” The word for holy is qadosh קָדוֹשׁ kaw-doshe', set apart.

Both things are true at once. The LORD is the one who makes His people holy, and His people keep His statutes and do them. These are not two rival ways of becoming holy but a single way: God sanctifies, and those He sanctifies walk in what He has commanded. Holiness is not something a person manufactures alone, and neither is it something that happens while he ignores what God has said.

The psalmist asked the practical question:

Psalm 119:9 By what does a young man keep his path pure? By guarding it according to your word.

A young man does not keep his path clean by trying harder in some vague way. The psalm answers its own question: “By guarding it according to your word.”

Where This Sits

All of this must be kept in its place. As we saw in Chapter 2, holiness belongs to step three, sanctification, the life of someone who has already been justified. No one is justified by keeping Leviticus; we are justified by grace through faith in Messiah’s blood. The frustrated believer who could not overcome sin by his own effort was right about one thing: his own strength was never going to accomplish it.

But the answer to weak flesh is not to throw away the song. The answer is the Spirit, and the Torah written on the heart, so that “the dikaioma(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us.”

One more verse is often used to move the definition of sin away from the Torah and onto faith alone. Paul wrote that “everything that is not from faith is sin.” If that is the definition of sin, does the Torah still matter? The answer begins with reading that verse where it stands.