“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4 ESV).
Paul wrote to believers in Rome to explain how the gospel revealed God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. In the verses immediately preceding this statement, Paul described Israel’s tragic error. They were “ignorant of the righteousness of God” and sought “to establish their own” righteousness instead of submitting to the righteousness God provided.
Their problem was not simply that they failed to keep the law perfectly. Their deeper mistake was believing they could establish a righteous standing before God through their own obedience. They treated the law as a ladder by which they could climb toward God rather than as a mirror that exposed their sin and a signpost that pointed them to Christ.
When Paul called Christ “the end of the law,” he used the Greek word telos that could mean goal, fulfillment, or culmination. Christ was the goal toward which the law had always pointed. The law revealed God’s holy character, exposed humanity’s guilt, and anticipated the Messiah who would fulfill its demands.
Righteousness was never earned by law-keeping. Abraham believed God, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6). Abel, Noah, David, and other Old Testament believers were also accepted by grace through faith. It wasn’t the sacrifices and ceremonies that justified them but the fulfillment that they pointed to. The sacrifices were like checks written on faith in a future deposit. They expressed a faith that looked forward to God’s promised provision. In Christ, that provision was fully revealed and permanently secured for everyone who believes.
We must resist the same temptation to establish a righteousness of our own. Trusting in morality, religious activity, ministry success, or generosity cannot make us right with God. We are justified only by trusting in Christ, who perfectly fulfilled the law and bore its penalty in our place. Our obedience does not earn God’s acceptance. It flows from the acceptance we have already received through faith in Christ. Therefore, we can stop striving to prove ourselves and rest in the righteousness God freely gives through faith in Christ.
PRAYER: Dear Father, forgive us for trying to establish a righteousness of our own. Help us trust completely in the righteousness You have provided through Your Son. Teach us to obey from gratitude rather than striving, and to rest in Christ as the goal and fulfillment of the law. In Jesus’ name, amen.