Received by Faith

When approached as a means of justification the saving criterion of the law itself is perfection. Law and faith are absolutely and irreconcilably antithetical when it comes to how a person is justified. One is either justified by faith or by keeping God’s law. The latter option Paul takes to be an obvious absurdity since all of God’s end-time blessings must be received by faith, in line with the example of Abraham, to whom these promises of blessing were originally made.

 

Ben Dunson, "The Law Evidently Is Not Contrary to Faith": Galatians and the Republication of the Covenant of Works, Westminster Theological Journal, 79 (2017), 252