The Law of the Holy Spirit
Good Morning Friends,
One has to wonder at what was happening to Paul spiritually and emotionally in his life to prompt this amazing writing of the letter to the Romans. We of course have some clues. He writes about how he and we are to be justified once and for all when he believed through faith in the saving grace of Jesus. He claims to have once been alive apart from the law. Then he weaves in our ongoing relationship with God through the process of Sanctification.
He covers so much territory as he is in the process of figuring out how sanctification works and how to share what is happening in his life with others. Perhaps his enlightenment was in discovering that the law was not the problem but how we relate to the law and specifically the discovery that the Law of Moses, the list of 613 the Jews required to drive behavior, actually drives us to rely on grace through faith in Christ. For Paul his relationship with the laws drive him to the awareness that they cannot sanctify us. His attempt to do so was a failure. Mosaic laws cannot make us holy. The only way is to become dead to sin and resurrected to new life. Friends, believers have the power to master sin. Believers are not under the Law of Moses but under Grace and the Law of Christ. But know this, whom God loves he will chasten so we might fully discover a liberating life in The Law of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Romans 6:1-14 (NIV)
Message: In the previous passage Paul has been teaching doctrine and the new man’s ability to appropriate and live out that doctrine by faith. The challenge is to make it practical and ongoing and personal in a way that results in actions that correspond to this belief. Here our union with Christ secures not just our pardon but also destroys the power of sin over us. If we have died with Christ to sin and been raised by resurrection power we can walk in new life, we can determine whether acts of sin or acts of righteousness will come from our life. We cannot serve two masters. We now serve the newness of the spirit. Following the letter of the law is a path to sin. Only in love….the love of the Holy Spirit dwelling with in us can we truly live as intended. This is the law of Christ. This is the law of Love that builds spiritual capital in community as a witness to the truth of Christ…the power of love.
Pray we realize that in battling sin, our way of deliverance is though the law of the Spirit. Pray we realize that the Spirit of the Law looks forward with newness and power to an amazing future. Pray we realize that the Spirit of the Law always leads with love but always circles back so we not forget the truth. Pray we believe that the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwells in each of us. Pray we realize that our choosing to have the Holy Spirit live within us is basically asking God to glorify us too.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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