Paul spoke of trying to live his life “under the law.” “With my mind,” he says, I “serve the law of God.” But when the law came it aroused the sinful passions of the flesh. So Paul was defeated. “I don’t do what, in my mind, I want to do; yet I do the things that in my mind I don’t want to do.” The problem he said was, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me (7:20). The problem is that rule #1 (come on Paul, do evil) is strengthened or aroused by the law that Paul longs to obey.
What is the answer? The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death (8:2). There is another law that comes into the one who is “in Christ Jesus,” who has learned to walk according to the Spirit rather than the flesh (8:1). This law is the life of Christ. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20a). In Rom. 8:9a Paul says it like this: But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Christ lives in the believer by His Holy Spirit who indwelt the one who has put his faith in Christ. We know this has happened because, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ he is not His (8:9b). The Holy Spirit, when we are born again, makes us alive in Christ. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (8:11). This is the “eternal life” promised in the gospel (John 3:16). This is what it means to be a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
But still, what does this rule #4 do? First, it does what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh (8:3a). Second, it condemns sin in the flesh (8:3b). That is, it takes away the power of the first law. But again, what is the power of the first law? It is the second law, the law of God. What Christ did was remove the law of God by fulfilling it, by fully satisfying the righteous demands of God’s law. Remember that Jesus promised this: I did not come to destroy but to fulfill … one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18). This fulfillment came to an end with His death on the cross. When He said, “It is finished,” He had fulfilled the law.
The way Paul said this in Colossians was this: having wiped out the hand-writing of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross (2:14). The “hand-writing of ordinances” is not a list of your sins; it is the righteous requirements of the law! And that, my brothers and sisters, is the circumcision made without hands. And now you can understand why, after Moses told Israel the LORD has not yet given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day (Dt. 29:4) that He then promised that the day would come when the LORD your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live (Dt. 30:6).
No comments:
Post a Comment