Why can't keeping the Ten Commandments justify a person before God?
Keeping the Ten Commandments cannot justify anyone because every human being is a lawbreaker and a sinner by nature. The Law does not make people righteous; it gives the knowledge of sin. All have sinned and fall short of God's glory, so justification comes freely by His grace through redemption in Christ Jesus.
Les teaches that every human being has been a lawbreaker and is a sinner by nature, so by keeping the Ten Commandments no flesh shall be justified. The Law's role is to give the knowledge of sin. He stresses that all have sinned—not just Gentiles, but Jew and Gentile alike—and come short of the glory of God. People are sinners because of who they are, as offspring of Adam; they sin because they are sinners, not because they sin. The remedy is being justified freely without a cause by His grace, His unmerited favor, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.
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.
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
More Questions
Why can't a person be justified by the deeds of the law?
Doing the law's deeds cannot justify anyone in God's sight because the law gives knowledge of sin, not knowledge of salvation or a way to heaven.