“‘Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And all the people shall say, Amen. Try imagining that scene literally — an entire crowd agreeing out loud to a standard none of them could actually keep perfectly. Amen means so be it. They said yes to a bar no one clears.
Paul later picks up this exact verse and uses it to make a hard point: if the law demands perfect obedience and nobody can deliver that, then the law alone was never going to be the way people got right with God. It was diagnosing a problem, not solving it.
That might sound bleak, but there's something honest and even relieving underneath it. You don't have to keep performing at a standard this impossible to be taken seriously by God. This verse names the problem clearly — and the rest of the story is about what happens next, for people who can't say amen to their own perfection.
If perfection was never actually the way in, what would it mean to stop performing it and ask what the real way might be?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.