Listen, if you claim to be a Jew, count on the law, and boast in your relationship with God;

Before God gave the law, sin existed, but there was no way to account for it. Outside the law, how could anyone be charged and found guilty of sin?

Moses made this clear long ago when he wrote about what it takes to have a right relationship with God based on the law: “The person devoted to the law’s commands will live by them.”

But a right relationship based on faith sounds like this: “Do not say to yourselves, ‘Who will go up into heaven?’” (that is, to bring down the Anointed One),