Romans 3:20
For no one is made right before God by doing what the law requires. The law only helps us recognize what sin really is.
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Job 25:4How can a human being be right before God? Can anyone born of woman be pure?
Psalms 143:2Please don't place me, your servant, on trial, because nobody is innocent in your sight.
Romans 2:13Just listening to what the law says doesn't make you right in God's sight. It's those who do what the law says who are made right.
Romans 4:13God's promise to Abraham and his descendants that the world would belong to him was not based on his keeping of the law, but because he was made right through his trust in God.
Romans 5:13Even before the law was given, sin was in the world, however it wasn't counted as sin because there was no law.
Romans 7:7So what do we conclude? That the law is sin? Of course not! I wouldn't have known what sin was unless the law defined it. I wouldn't have realized that wanting to have other people's things for myself was wrong without the law that says, “Don't desire for yourself what belongs to someone else.”
Matthew Henry on Romans 3:20-31
Justification by Faith; Christ a Propitiation. ( a. d. 58.) 19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 Even the righteousness of God which is by… Read the whole commentary →