Morning by morning

[Morning By Morning - he wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught]

Romans 8: 2

Dear friends,


Good morning! Hey, we missed something back there, Paul; what did you say?

2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death

What's this "law of the Spirit of life"?

I know what he means by the "law of sin and death." He means religion as this grinding slog where we try to get to heaven by following the ten commandments and their various elaborations. Paul took us aside for all of chapters 6 and 7 to deal with the mess sin makes of God's holy law, showing us that being determined to obey it all out of our own strength is just hopeless. But what is the law of the Spirit of life?

Earlier when we were listening to chapter 5, we heard him speak of the reign of grace, and this is much the same thing. Struggling to improve ourselves enough that we no longer covet and we discard every idol and we speak with pure speech and we revel in the rest of the sabbath and so on makes us look like this:
Careful! You're tilting!

Something has happened to Paul, something he shared with thousands of people through his teaching and witnessing and now has shared with more than a billion of us through his writing. He has welcomed Jesus as savior and Lord, and what that has produced is a whole new relationship with God and God's will. That produces a whole different kind of lifting. Like this:


At first I thought that "the law of Spirit and life" was just a bit of bad writing. Ok, so sometimes I'm not too bright. Now I'm seeing that Paul wants us to understand that life in the Spirit has its own order, its own law. Grace isn't chaotic; neither is grace self-indulgent. Life in the Spirit includes and even rejoices in moral strength and decent order. Those are huge gifts. How the Holy Spirit comes and helps us to live in His order, free from condemnation, is the great subject to which Paul now turns in this immensely conceived chapter.

Love,
Jeff

Copyright ©Jeff Black - www.morningbymorning.org

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.




--
Jan Dadák

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