How long has the law of faith been in effect?
The answer is forever. Hebrews 11 confirms this. It says the worlds were framed by faith. The law of faith did not begin at Pentecost, and it did not begin when Paul wrote Romans. People related to God by faith long before there was a written code.
Did the Law of Moses come along and supersede the law of faith? No. Mosaic Law was given as a stopgap against sin until Christ came to establish a permanent solution through the law of faith. Read Galatians 3. The Law did not replace or supersede the law of faith. A close study of Scripture indicates that the law of faith always has, and always will, supersede every other law in heaven and on earth.
David and Rahab: blessed under a law that condemns
Hebrews 11 helps confirm this by naming people throughout the Bible who related to God through the law of faith. David and Rahab are two Old Testament people on that list who adhered to the law of faith but failed miserably to keep Mosaic Law. Under that Law they should have been executed. Yet instead of being cursed, they were blessed.
Why? Scripture says cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things written in the book of the law (Deut. 27:26). They were not cursed, because they appealed to a law that always has and always will supersede Mosaic Law. Mosaic Law has the power to condemn. It does not have the power to cure.
Hebrews 11 also makes it clear that the foundation for the coming of the Messiah was laid by the law of faith. It names a long list of people who walked by faith and laid that foundation piece by piece, across many generations and peoples. The Law had a divine purpose: to expose sin and slow its effects. Only the law of faith, rooted in Jesus Christ, has the power to cure sin.
A precept few of us actually grasp
What I have just described is a necessary precept. Christians who want a victorious life in this world, over sin and over Satan, need to grasp it. Yet so few of us have any clarity about it.
Here is one small example of how deep the appeal of law runs in the human psyche, over against faith in Christ. Our tendency to gravitate toward works shows up in the way we read Josiah, king of Judah.
Josiah: a tragic example of works alone
Many Bible teachers hold Josiah up as a wonderful example of how Christians should serve God with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength. I bought into that reading for years. The introduction Scripture gives him sounds so righteous. Maybe you saw through it at once. I did not. I saw him that way because I had so much in common with him: a lack of understanding of the law of works versus the law of faith. Both are holy. One kills. The other gives life.
In truth, Josiah is a tragic example of what happens to anyone who tries to please God through works only. Scripture says he turned to the Lord with all his heart, soul, and might, according to all the Law of Moses, and that no king before or after him was like him (2 Kings 23:25). That comparison includes David, his ancestor, not his father. Josiah’s father was Amon.
Look at the results. God did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath against Judah (2 Kings 23:26). Josiah was killed early, by Pharaoh Necho, in a battle he should never have fought (2 Kings 23:29; 2 Chron. 35:20–24). There is no evidence that Josiah knew the law of faith, much less that he applied it to anything he did. The law of faith convicts of wrongdoing, then goes a step further: it shows a better way forward, through faith in Christ.
Reinforcing the same point, Josiah’s name is not among the faithful in Hebrews 11. David, who obviously did not follow the Law with all his heart, is. When we seek to relate to God only by obeying a list of rules, we set ourselves up for alienation from him, because there is always another broken law between us and that relationship. Anything that is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23).
Obeying more by accident than on purpose
When I step out each day listening to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ, I find that I obey more laws by accident than I ever did on purpose when I was only trying to follow some law religiously.
That is the difference between the two holy laws. One measures and condemns. The other, rooted in Christ, relates a person to God and then produces obedience as a fruit rather than as a wage.