My imperfect, God-dependent, spirit-enabled, faith-based, love, which is real, but imperfect, is all performed by means of trusting another whose obedience was already perfect.

Hi, I'm your host, Dan Kruver.

What does it mean to fulfill the law without having to earn God's favor?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Romans 8, verses 3 and 4 to show how faith-rooted love flows from those already justified

in Christ, fulfilling the law as fruit, not foundation. This message was originally delivered

at Bethlehem Baptist Church on December 9th, 2001.

So here's the way I'm going to approach this.

I don't usually do this, but these questions keep coming back and back and back.

The Christian's relationship to the law.

We talked for years about Romans 7, Romans 8, even back as far as Romans 5 and 6.

All right.

What about the law?

What about the law?

Do we or don't we have to do it?

Are we justified by works of the law or by faith alone, apart from works of the law?

So these questions just keep coming back again and again.

And so what I want to do this morning is give a big overarching summary statement of the Christian's relationship to the law terminating on an

answer to this question, which will function as a reference point for us so that I don't have

to rebuild these again and again. And we can plow into Romans 8 with some assumptions as a church

at least for where I stand and I hope where you are. So I have 12 theses. They're not 95.

You can be thankful. Just 12. And I'll nail them on the door this morning. And I don't have time to develop all the text, but the texts are here.

But I won't take the time to unpack them.

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