Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid : yea, we establish the law.
Romans is a letter written by the apostle Paul — a former Pharisee, meaning a strict Jewish religious teacher and expert in the law, who became one of the most influential early followers of Jesus — to the Christian community in Rome around AD 57. A central argument in the letter is that people are made right with God through faith, not by perfectly keeping religious laws. But Paul anticipates an obvious pushback: if faith saves us, does God's law become irrelevant? His answer is a sharp no. He argues that genuine faith actually confirms and fulfills what the law was always pointing toward. The law revealed humanity's need for something beyond human effort — and faith in Christ is that something. Faith doesn't erase the law; it gives the law its proper place.
Father, thank you that faith isn't a loophole — it's a transformation. Where I've quietly used grace as an excuse to stay comfortable or avoid hard things, forgive me and change me. Let what you've done for me actually show up in how I live. Amen.
It's one of the oldest theological tug-of-wars: grace versus law. If you lean hard into grace — God loves you, you're forgiven, nothing can separate you from him — someone will eventually ask, "So does anything matter then? Can you just live however you want?" Paul has been fielding that question since the first century. His answer here is almost jarring in its confidence: Not at all. He doesn't qualify it. He doesn't say "well, it's complicated." He knows the anxiety underneath the question, and he refuses to let it win. Here's what Paul is actually getting at: when grace genuinely lands — when it actually reaches you — it doesn't make you careless. It makes you different. The law asked for obedience out of fear or duty or the exhausting business of earning approval. Faith produces something from the inside, because something in you has changed. If your experience of grace has made you indifferent to how you live, it may not have fully arrived yet. Real grace turns out to be the most morally demanding thing in the world — not because it requires performance, but because it transforms the person doing the performing.
In your own words, what does Paul mean when he says faith "upholds" the law rather than nullifying it? What distinction is he drawing?
Have you ever encountered someone — or been someone — who used the idea of grace as permission to be careless? What does that look like, and where does it go wrong?
Is there a tension in your own life between trusting God's grace and taking real responsibility for how you live? How do you hold those two things together honestly?
How does this verse shape the way you might talk with someone who thinks faith is just about being forgiven and then doing whatever feels right?
What would it look like in a specific, practical way this week to uphold something you know is right — not out of obligation, but out of genuine faith?
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid . Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
Romans 7:7
I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
Galatians 2:21
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Romans 8:4
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Romans 13:8
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Romans 6:1
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Romans 13:10
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
Matthew 5:17
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
Romans 10:4
Do we then nullify the Law by this faith [making the Law of no effect, overthrowing it]? Certainly not! On the contrary, we confirm and establish and uphold the Law [since it convicts us all of sin, pointing to the need for salvation].
AMP
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
ESV
Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.
NASB
Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.
NIV
Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.
NKJV
Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.
NLT
But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don't we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.
MSG