Rom 3:27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. ESV
Another way of reading this verse that helped me understand it is to read it as faith’s law. Putting it in the possessive case as we ask, what is faith’s law – What is it that excludes boasting?
I think the answer lies in the fact that we are not to think that “we deserve” and boast about it, we are to trust in Jesus. If we can just learn that one lesson we will have taken the most important step to entering into the Jesus’ Rest. That is the great truth that Paul set before the Hebrews …
Heb 4:10-11 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. ESV
We can think about peace of mind or peace of soul, peace of heart, or peace of spirit but there is no true peace unless we understand what Paul puts forth … boasting is excluded by the law of faith. We must “labor” to enter into His rest and that means that we must labor to rest from our works. And that involves our ceasing to “boasting” in our goodness in the sight of our fellowman. That takes some serious labor on our part if we are to rest from our boasting and enter into His rest. Bishop Handley Moule captured that fact …
An who can analyze or describe the joy and rest of the soul from which at last is ‘shut out’ the foul influence of a religious ‘boast’?
He reflects on the fact that we have boasted in ourselves and valued ourselves as having somehow become worthy of eternal life. But in light of what Paul tells us, that boasting has been set away by the faith’s law. Entering into Jesus’ Rest requires us to put our boasting under His feet, shutting the door on any boasting by our faith in Him. There can be no true rest without our using faith’s law to ensure that is accomplished in our life, and just as true is the fact that there is no happiness where there the holiness of Jesus is absent … the holiness we have been given in the Holy Spirt that can only become a reality in our life in the absence of boasting.