Christ the End of the Law

…God, they said instead, “It is not for a good work that we stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33). Or it may be read in this way: they have not known the righteousness that comes from God (Romans 10:3), that is, Christ, or else the righteousness that comes through faith in him. Supposing that they were fighting side by side with the law given through Moses, they remained disobedient, not seeking the Son who is able to set free (John 8:36), who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5), and who, in his saving dispensation, cuts short the righteousness of the law, so hard to achieve, to give release from hardship and toil.

“For Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). The law, then, was brought in beforehand to be a tutor for the people of old, leading them to the mystery of Christ (Galatians 3:24), and to give them glimpses of the truth through riddles. That is how we define Christ as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and quite rightly. Or would not the truth reasonably be understood to be the fulfilment of every obscure riddle? And how could anyone doubt it? So the passage from what was in shadows to the truth does not do away with the laws given through Moses; rather, it makes their meaning clearer.

Now that things have passed over into truth, and what was in types and riddles has been changed for the better, we do not say that the law has been abolished, but rather that it has been brought to completion at the time when the truth, that is, Christ, shone upon us. For Christ is the end of the law and the prophets, and he would not speak falsely when he says, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it” (Matthew 5:17). For just as the many colours, added in due time, by no means do away with the shadowy outlines first sketched on painted panels, but rather bring them into clearer view, in the same way we say that the shadows of the law have not been overturned, but rather brought to completion, as in an advance toward the truth.

“For Moses writes of the righteousness that is from the law,” and the rest (Romans 10:5). “For Moses writes,” he says, “of the righteousness that is from the law, that the person who does it shall live by it” (Romans 10:5; Leviticus 18:5). But there was no one at all who could carry it out blamelessly; for “who will understand transgressions?” (Psalm 19:12). So the grace that justifies is better, and it frees us from the indictment that stands in the law.

“But the righteousness that is from faith speaks thus” (Romans 10:6). He usefully lays down how faith should be practised on our part, if it is to be blameless before God and to seem very well done indeed. For to doubt at all, and to be given to being tossed about into feeble double-mindedness, is utterly to be rejected; and it is perhaps superfluous, and among the most dangerous things of all, to think one must pry into what lies beyond all reason and above our understanding. For how could the things God works in ways beyond words be plain to see? And what eye of the heart could be so great as to be able to behold God? Or rather, who will understand, even if someone chose to speak and set out things that are very far above us? For…