Under the Spirit Not the Law; Romans 5-8

May the mumbling commence!

Thanks to Jesus Christ, we are in a whole new paradigm for living.  Rejoice and be glad!  There are some awesome benefits to being dead to the Law and alive to God.  Read from Romans chapter seven (NJB):

As people who are familiar with the Law, brothers, you cannot have forgotten that the law can control a person only during that person's lifetime.  A married woman, for instance, is bound to her husband by law, as long as he lives, but when her husband dies all her legal obligation to him as husband is ended.  So if she were to have relations with another man while her husband was still alive, she would be termed an adulteress; but if her husband dies, her legal obligation comes to an end and if she then has relations with another man, that does not make her an adulteress. 

In the same way you, my brothers, through the body of Christ have become dead to the Law and so you are able to belong to someone else, that is, to him who was raised from the dead to make us live fruitfully for God.  While we were still living by our natural inclinations, the sinful passions aroused by the Law were working in all parts of our bodies to make us live lives which were fruitful only for death.  But now we are released from the Law, having died to what was binding us, and so we are in a new service, that of the spirit, and not in the old service of a written code. (Verses 1-6)   

Laws only affect the living.  When we die with Christ in our baptism, we die to the power of the Law.  We die only to be raised from the dead –just as Christ was – so that we might be living fruitful lives for God.

Thanks be to God!  We are no longer bound by the Law, which has only ever led to death because of the wiliness of sin.  We are now bound, through Christ Jesus, to the Spirit under which the Law was written.  We are freed to live in the Spirit without fear of death or the retribution of God.

We are free to bear fruit for God – fruit that lasts.  The imperishable fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. AGAINST SUCH THINGS THERE IS NO LAW.

O Lord, bind our spirits, souls, bodies, and hearts to the Spirit of the Law.

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out