Justified and Forgiven

Acts 13:32-33, 38-39

“And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus . . . .

“Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”

Acts 13:38-39 (Literal Translation)

. . . and from everything that you were not able by the law of Moses to be justified by (in) him all who believe are justified.

Aaron Orendorff

The Law of Moses cannot justify, not because the law itself is somehow flawed or defective, but rather—as the literal translation of v. 38 reads— because we ourselves “were not able.” Romans 8:3-4 reads in many ways like an expanded commentary on vv. 38-39: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

The point in both places is the same: the law (as a system of salvation) demands perfect obedience; we—in the weakness of our flesh, that is, under the power and willful influence of sin—cannot fulfill its “righteous requirements.” God, therefore, through the person of his Son, “condemned” sin by condemning Christ. In other words, God destroyed sin, emptying it of its legal power by, as Colossians 2:14 says, “nailing it to the cross.”

The result? Acts 13:38: “. . . through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed . . .”

Forgiveness, not because of who we are or what we’ve done; not because of our desert or even on account of our pleading. Forgiveness because “what God promised to the father, this he has fulfilled to us.”