Ancient Jewish people (and orthodox or practicing Jews today) had an exhaustive list of religious, cultural, and ceremonial laws that they were to follow—some 613 to be exact. To be a faithful child of God meant to follow them to the letter. And, as you can imagine, fail at that endeavor and need forgiveness. As Jews were coming to Christ (Gentiles, too) there was always questions about whether or not these converts needed to follow the Law. A great deal of Paul’s writing went to address this very topic. But Paul’s marriage analogy in Romans 7:1-3 described how that since we have died with Christ through faith, the bond(age) that we had to the law was now done away with. We were free from striving to keep it. Jesus kept it, and we are united with him.
But that doesn’t mean that the law was useless or even sinful. In fact, it had a critical role. It was to reveal the depth of sin that actually lived in us. The law was to act like a mirror, reflecting back to us the depth of our own sin. Additionally, the high demand of the law produced in us a war….the good we wanted to do in obedience to God vs. the sin we wanted to pursue in rebellion to God. We used this example in the sermon: if you tell a child “don’t touch that,” they almost always will want to—and probably will. They may not ever have considered touching that thing, but now that they weren’t allowed to, they were going to. This is one critical part of the law’s job in our life….it sprang sin to life and revealed that it was laying dormant the whole time.
So, now what? In desperation, we cry out for help in the war between the Spirit’s desire in us and the sinful desire in us. And who comes to our aid? Paul says it is Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God!
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