Earning God’s Approval: Good Luck With That!

James says: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). Given the examples provided in these verses, it seems clear that James has in mind what we often describe as the “moral law” in the Old Testament. Much of the “cultic law,” such as dietary laws or other laws of rite and ritual, are no longer binding upon believers today. But the “moral law” is timeless. Every culture has some sense of moral law woven into the fabric of its social code, even if that culture fails to understand that the essence of its law is rooted in the grace of God.  

For Christians, the moral law is aptly summarized in the “Ten Commandments” in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. This moral law is a cohesive unit to be obeyed in its entirety. We are not permitted to ignore any of it. James says we are to “keep the whole law.”

This raises a necessary clarification. Remember that James is writing to Christians. We’ve stated that this letter is not about how to become a Christian but how to behave as a Christian. James is writing to those saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. So James is not teaching here that one is saved by keeping the Old Testament Law, keeping the 10 Commandments.

Many people believe this is what the Bible teaches. Many wrongly think Christianity is about following rules and regulations to gain God’s approval. But Christianity is not so much about following principles as it is about following a Person, namely Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who obeyed perfectly “the whole” law so that we could be forgiven of our sins. Once we have trusted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we live out the moral law in obedience to God, not as a means by which to be saved—that has been accomplished already through faith in Jesus Christ—but as a means of glorifying God with our new hearts.

One of the primary functions of the Old Testament law is to convict unbelievers of sin, forever pointing out their inability to keep the law and pointing to the only one who perfectly has Jesus Christ (cf. Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:21-24).  

The Bible is a mirror. As we look into it, we must allow it to show us what we are before we can expect to do what it says. We can’t do what it says until we first see what we are. We must first see our sin before we can rightly see our Savior. Then we turn to Him, trusting Him as Lord. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Jesus lived for us and died for us. He kept the law perfectly and thus fulfilled the law on our behalf. He died, taking our punishment for breaking the law, and He rose from the dead so we could be declared righteous by faith in Him (Romans 4:25).

So if we have been saved through faith in Christ, the law is now “lived out” in us, not to gain our justification, but to grow in our sanctification. Christians live the law, not to get saved; Christians live the moral law because they are saved.

James teaches that Christians should be living out this moral law by “keeping” it, keeping “the whole law.” Again, William Barclay is helpful. He notes the wrong way many in James’ day thought of the Law:

The Jew was very apt to regard the law as a series of detached injunctions. To keep one was to gain credit; to break one was to incur debt. A man could add up the ones he kept and subtract the ones he broke and so emerge with a credit or a debit balance. ¹   

This is precisely how many today regard the observance of biblical commands. They think if they keep a biblical command, they will gain a credit, and when they break a biblical command, they will incur a debt. They hope they will have more credits than debts in the end and perhaps tip the scales of justice in their favor or gain greater acceptance from God.

But it is impossible to be saved by keeping the law (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16) because it is a cohesive unit. A person must obey it in its entirety—and no person does that consistently and flawlessly. To break one single command violates all the laws, just as a crack in the glass affects an entire windshield.

If you hope to be saved by keeping the law, you must keep all of it consistently and flawlessly.  

Think about taking a test in school. Say there are 100 questions worth one point each, and you miss 5; you get a 95%. That’s an A by most calculations. But imagine if you took that test and there were 100 questions worth one point each, and you missed only one and received an F. You would argue, “But I got 99 right; I missed only one!” The teacher replies, “It doesn’t matter. This test is a pass or fail test, and because you did not get all of the questions correct, you failed.”

If you hope to keep the Old Testament law to earn salvation, you must know that God does not grade on a curve. You’ve got to keep the whole law in its entirety. Breaking any one of the laws is to break all of them. Breaking just one command makes one “a transgressor of the law.”

Here’s another way to think of it: Imagine you are rushing to catch a plane. You are hurrying through check-in, moving quickly through the security line, and now running to the gate so you can catch the plane. But when you finally reach that gate, it does not matter whether you are just one minute or ten minutes late; once that gate is closed, you are not getting on that plane. It doesn’t matter how close you got; you are not allowed to board that flight.

If you are not a Christian, it doesn’t matter how closely you try to follow the 10 Commandments. It doesn’t matter how “close” you get because you are not saved by keeping the law. Nobody keeps the law consistently and flawlessly—nobody but Jesus. That’s why He is the only way in. 

From the standpoint of an unbeliever, “sin is sin,” whether it is murder, adultery, or lying. Just one sin will keep a person from getting through the “gate” into heaven. It doesn’t matter if it’s a “big” sin or a “little” sin. Just one is enough to keep anyone from entering heaven.

This raises the need for another important word of clarification. While the phrase “sin is sin” is rightly used when referring to an unbeliever’s inability to earn forgiveness or his hoping somehow to gain entrance to heaven based on an accrued number of “credits,” using this phrase is not always helpful.

We should use the phrase “sin is sin” with care. Not all sins are equal in the sense that not all are equally heinous, equally ugly, or similarly reprehensible. You may be fired from a job for lying or for beating up a co-worker, but which would you rather have to explain at your next job interview?

Would you rather your daughter be guilty of driving too fast or robbing a bank? To say “sin is sin” is to fail to account for degrees of wickedness as well as degrees of punishment or consequence.

Some sins are more or less heinous, but all are equally deadly in terms of a lost person’s hope of gaining some sense of favor before God, doing good works to become more “savable.”  

The law is a cohesive unit. It is an interdependent whole. It is to be obeyed in its entirety. So, the Christian lives the law, not to gain justification but to grow in sanctification. And James reminds Christians that they are not permitted to “cherry pick” which commands they like and leave off those they don’t like.  

So you can’t say, “Well, I know murder is bad, and I’m not going to do that,” but then you ignore the commandment forbidding adultery by lusting in your heart, which makes you a lawbreaker (Matthew 5:27-28). More to James’ point: it is wrong to think, “Well, adultery and murder, I’ve never done these things, and I never will,” but then you show favoritism by being kind to rich people and shunning poor people. You have become a lawbreaker.  

Love Others Without Partiality.
Obey The Law In Its Entirety.

There’s one more action James calls for in these verses:

Live With A View To Eternity.

We’ll explore that action next time!

**Excerpt from You’re Either Walking The Walk Or Just Running Your Mouth (Preaching Truth: 2020), pages 72-77, available on Amazon.

1. Commentary on James 2. William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible” https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/james-2.html 1956-1959.