What Does "End" Mean in Romans 10:4?¶

A Plain-English Summary of the Biblical Evidence

Romans 10:4 is one of the most debated verses in discussions about whether God's law continues or has been set aside. In the King James Bible it reads:

"For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (Romans 10:4)

The entire question turns on one word: "end." The Greek word is telos, and it does not carry a single fixed meaning. It can mean "termination" (something has stopped), or it can mean "goal" and "purpose" (the destination something was always heading toward). When we say "the end of education is wisdom," we do not mean education has been terminated -- we mean its purpose is wisdom. So which meaning did Paul intend? The only honest way to answer that is to let the rest of Scripture clarify what this verse means.

The Same Author Uses the Same Construction Elsewhere¶

The single most important piece of evidence is a parallel passage from the same author. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul writes:

"Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." (1 Timothy 1:5)

Here "the end of the commandment" uses the identical Greek grammatical construction as Romans 10:4 -- telos plus the genitive of a law-related word, set as a predicate. No one reads 1 Timothy 1:5 as saying the commandment has been terminated. It plainly means: the goal or purpose of the commandment is love. The commandment is still there; love is what it aims at.

In the very same paragraph, Paul goes on to say:

"But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners..." (1 Timothy 1:8-9)

He then lists violations of the Ten Commandments -- murder, sexual immorality, kidnapping, lying, perjury -- as the things the law addresses. The commandment has a goal (love), the law is good, and the Ten Commandments are its content. All of this comes from the same author writing in the same passage. If the goal of the commandment is love in 1 Timothy 1:5, then the most natural reading of the identical construction in Romans 10:4 is that Christ is the goal of the law for righteousness.

What Paul Says About the Law in the Same Letter¶

Romans 10:4 does not exist in isolation. It sits inside the letter to the Romans, and Paul makes numerous statements about the law throughout this same epistle. Every one of them treats the law as something that continues rather than something that has been abolished.

Early in the letter, Paul directly asks and answers the question:

"Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." (Romans 3:31)

"God forbid" translates the Greek me genoito, which is the strongest possible negation in the language. Paul is emphatic: faith does not cancel the law. It establishes it.

In chapter 7, Paul identifies the law by quoting the tenth commandment ("Thou shalt not covet") and then declares:

"Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." (Romans 7:12)

These are present-tense descriptions. The law is holy. It is just. It is good.

In chapter 8, Paul describes the purpose of God sending His Son:

"That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans 8:4)

The law has a "righteousness" -- a righteous requirement -- and that requirement is to be fulfilled in believers through the Spirit. This is not the language of termination.

And near the end of the letter, Paul quotes five of the Ten Commandments by name:

"For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13:9-10)

Paul treats these commandments as active, operative instructions. Love does not replace them; love fulfills them. The law is still there, and love is how it reaches its intended purpose.

The Verses Immediately After Romans 10:4¶

What Paul does right after writing Romans 10:4 is striking. In verses 6 through 8, he quotes from Deuteronomy 30:12-14 -- a passage from the Torah, from Moses -- and identifies it as "the righteousness which is of faith" speaking:

"But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? ... But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach." (Romans 10:6, 8)

Paul is saying that the Torah itself -- the very law he just mentioned in verse 4 -- teaches the righteousness of faith. The law was never opposed to faith. It was always pointing people toward faith. If the law had just been terminated in verse 4, it would make no sense for Paul to immediately quote the law as the authoritative teacher of faith-righteousness in verses 6-8.

The Context of Israel's Failure¶

The passage leading into Romans 10:4 explains what went wrong with Israel. Paul writes:

"Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law." (Romans 9:31-32)

And then:

"For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." (Romans 10:3)

Israel's problem was not the law. The problem was their method -- they pursued the law's righteousness through works instead of through faith. They tried to build their own righteousness rather than submitting to God's. Romans 10:4 answers this problem: Christ is the goal the law was always pointing toward for righteousness, and that goal is reached by faith, not by self-effort. The law was aiming at Christ all along; Israel missed where it was pointing.

What the Word "Telos" Actually Means¶

The Greek word telos appears 42 times in the New Testament. It carries several different senses depending on context: goal, outcome, result, end-point, perseverance, and sometimes cessation. The cessation meaning accounts for roughly 10 percent of its appearances -- it is a minority usage.

Paul himself uses telos elsewhere in Romans:

"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death." (Romans 6:21)

"But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." (Romans 6:22)

In both cases, telos means the outcome or result -- what a path leads to. Sin does not "terminate" into death; sin produces death as its result. Service to God does not "terminate" into everlasting life; it produces everlasting life as its outcome. Paul's own usage of the word in this very letter points toward the outcome/goal sense, not the cessation sense.

The root of telos (tello) means "to set out for a definite point or goal." The entire word family -- teleios (complete, mature), teleioo (to perfect, to complete), teleiotes (perfecter, completer) -- consistently emphasizes reaching completion or achieving a purpose, not stopping or terminating.

What Jesus Said¶

Although Romans 10:4 is Paul's writing, Jesus himself addressed the question of whether the law would be destroyed:

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (Matthew 5:17)

This is a double denial -- "Think not" followed by "I am not come to destroy." Jesus explicitly rejected the idea that his coming meant the law's destruction. If Christ is the "termination" of the law, this statement from Jesus becomes very difficult to account for.

What the Bible Does NOT Say¶

Honest handling of this question requires acknowledging what the text does not explicitly state:

No verse in the New Testament says "the moral law has been terminated" or "the Ten Commandments are abolished."
No verse says "telos in Romans 10:4 means termination." That reading is an inference from one possible sense of the word.
No verse says "telos in Romans 10:4 means goal" in those exact words either. That reading is an inference from the 1 Timothy 1:5 parallel and the surrounding context. However, this inference has the support of an identical construction from the same author where the meaning is not in dispute.
Romans 10:4 taken by itself is genuinely ambiguous. The word telos could theoretically go either way. The ambiguity can only be resolved by looking at how the same author uses the same construction elsewhere and what the same letter says about the law in other passages.
The phrase "for righteousness" in Romans 10:4 limits the scope of the statement to the law's relationship with righteousness specifically. What exactly that limitation entails is not spelled out in further detail.

Conclusion¶

When the evidence is examined, the "goal" or "purpose" reading of telos in Romans 10:4 is supported by every contextual indicator available: the identical construction in 1 Timothy 1:5 where the meaning is clearly "goal," Paul's emphatic denial that faith voids the law in Romans 3:31, his affirmation that the law is holy and just and good in Romans 7:12, his statement that the law's righteous requirement is fulfilled in Spirit-led believers in Romans 8:4, his quoting of the Torah as the voice of faith-righteousness in Romans 10:6-8, his listing of five Decalogue commandments as operative in Romans 13:9-10, and Jesus' own declaration that he did not come to destroy the law in Matthew 5:17.

The "termination" reading, by contrast, rests on selecting the minority meaning of telos (used in roughly 10 percent of its New Testament occurrences) and then maintaining that reading against the weight of the same author's identical construction, the same epistle's repeated affirmations of the law, and Jesus' explicit denial of law-destruction. Christ is the goal toward which the law was always pointing for righteousness -- and that goal is received by faith.

Based on the full technical study completed 2026-02-26

These companion sites use the same tool-driven research methodology:

Site	Description
The Final Fate of the Wicked	A 21-study investigation examining every major text, word, and argument bearing on the final fate of the wicked. 632 evidence items classified.
Genesis 6: The "Sons of God" Question	Who are the "sons of God" in Genesis 6:1-4? A 10-part report built on 28 supporting studies examines the angel view vs. the godly human view using explicit biblical evidence.
The Ten Commandments	A 17-study investigation of the Ten Commandments -- origin, meaning, Hebrew and Greek word studies, love and law, faith and obedience. 1,054 evidence items classified.
Bible Study Collection	Standalone Bible studies on various topics -- genealogies, prophecy, biblical history, and more. Each study is a self-contained investigation produced by the same three-agent pipeline.