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I. The MERITORIOUS cause — Christ.

II. The INSTRUMENTAL cause — Faith. The faith of Christ.

1. The faith which Christ makes possible.

2. The faith which Christ gives.

3. The faith which Christ receives.

4. The faith through which Christ comes.

5. The faith by which Christ works.

6. The faith which Christ will crown.The works of the law here (Romans 3:20) and elsewhere are undoubtedly the works required generally by the law of the old covenant — not ceremonial as contradistinguished from moral, nor moral as contradistinguished from ceremonial — but whatever of one kind and another it imposed in the form of precept — the law, in short, as a rule of right and wrong laid in its full compass on the consciences of men; but pre-eminently, of course, the law of the Ten Commandments, which lay at the heart of the whole, and was its pervading root and spirit. By deeds of conformity to this law they knew that they could not be justified, because they had not kept it.

(Fairbairn.)

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KJV: 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.

WEB: yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.