“We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life.”
2 Corinthians 3:4-6 NLT
The new way of the Spirit is the Way of life. Period. The “old” way is the way of the law – and death. Why? Because by works of the law no one is justified (Romans 3:20). Are we saying that the law is sin? Or that we should continue in sin because we’re no longer under the law, but under grace? We absolutely must tread carefully here. Thanks be to God for the fullness of Scripture. Let’s hear what it says.
“Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” Romans 3:31 ESV
How do we uphold this law exactly? By adding faith in Jesus to the Old Testament codes like Sabbath keeping, tithing, festival keeping, and all that? What exactly are we talking about in regard to the relationship between faith and law? A great many Christians, faithful and diligent all, have had a great many disagreements on this point. Thus, let’s tread carefully. There’s danger on two sides…two extremes of anarchy and tyranny; antinomianism and legalism.
The thing to know is that biblical Christianity is not a half-way thing. It’s not a middle-ground compromise between the two extremes as though Christ let the sides settle in and then chose for Himself a middle path. On the contrary, Christ is that very standard itself and the extremes are counterfeit paths responding to Him.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”” Romans 1:16-17 ESV
The reality that Christ died and was raised again means this: He died because we have sinned and the penalty of sin is death. He who knew no sin became sin for us. See the holy logic at work? But not only this, but Christ was raised for our justification. We’re assured the righteousness of Christ through faith and through the reality of His empty tomb. If He had stayed there, He, like all others, would merely have been yet another man who stayed dead. Perhaps a great teacher – but yet just another man who died.
But the fact of His resurrection proves His Lordship (Romans 1:4). The simplicity of the righteousness by faith is offensive to legalists far and wide. They’d like to boast. They insist there’s something we can do to warrant God’s approval. But this is the very reason why it’s said that the gospel proves and shows the righteousness of God. Only God can save! By looking to Jesus we agree with God about His righteousness and our sin (1 John 1:8-10).
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14-15 ESV
The Israelites in the wilderness merely had to look at the serpent – that is, the work of God – and believe in order to be saved from death. As it went, due to their incessant grumbling and complaining, they were consequently bitten by deadly serpents and Moses, at God’s command, had a likeness lifted up for them to look at…in faith. Their healing was in looking up at the work God did, in grace, on their behalf. That was all. Likewise, Jesus Christ, for sin, and in the likeness of sinful flesh, was lifted up. This is the stumbling stone of the gospel of faith alone. No one is capable of working for God in order to earn salvation. The thought of that is so absurd that a man might as well say that he can jump over the moon.
“What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone,” Romans 9:30-32 ESV
Again, from the rooftops: Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes (Romans 10:4). There is nothing, nothing, and nothing we can ever do to appeal to God through works, only faith. And once this is done, please understand, we live and work and walk in that very same faith. The new life of the Spirit is ours. Spurgeon said, “When God forgives, he forgives forever. Until God can change or lie, He will never bring to mind again the sin of that man who He has pardoned.”
With men this isn’t so and that’s what makes this so hard. We too often remember every slight. We hold pains and failures close, don’t we? Are you nursing some failure or another? Remember, it’s the voice of the enemy, not the Spirit, that brings to mind a past sin. Lay at the cross all those failures, Christian…and leave them there. They’re gone. Gone. And gone. Has not the blood of Christ Himself washed them away or will you believe that something or another must be added?
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”” Romans 8:15 ESV
Misunderstanding the nature of the gospel is the heart of a thousand heresies. It’s also the heart of much feeble living by saved Christians who live like paupers rather than free sons and daughters. There is no law anymore. There’s only the new life in the Spirit. But let’s see this as the Scripture will have us see it. Let’s not go off on a tangent, nor fall back into the slavery either to sin or to law.
The other extreme is to say that since we’re in grace and that the law is dead, that we should continue in sin. This is antinomianism and it too is false. Christ didn’t die and raise again so that we’d continue to live according to the flesh.
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:7-8 ESV
The tragic reality is that the legalist is a legalist for others and antinomian to himself. Likewise, the same is true in reverse. All who reject Christ will entertain these two extremes even if unwittingly. For such is sin’s power of deception. Both are dead-ends. It’s only those roads after the cross that lead to life. Should we “do whatever we want” and call it faith? Why would we choose sin? The repentance of those things of which we’re now ashamed leaves them dead and buried under that beautiful ocean of God’s grace, to be seen no more. The greatest evidence of the new life in the Spirit is that we now hate sin. An unbeliever feels no remorse, nor battle against the flesh. The Christian can’t sin peacefully; he/she can’t go on their merry way in the flesh, because the principle of faith that’s alive within them is at war with the flesh. The unbeliever knows no such struggle.
Christians mature – that is, are sanctified – at different paces, yes, but all are indeed sanctified. The new life of the Spirit is a life over against rules and legalism because it’s a life of love, faith, and gratitude. Does this life, led by Spirit, make our feelings/emotions lord?
By no means!
On the contrary, the Spirit speaks to us through Scripture. Boice put it this way: “life in the Spirit doesn’t make study of Scripture unnecessary, it makes it effective.”
Life in the Spirit is the love of the Lord who is the Spirit and the Spirit shows us the Lord via the reading and application of His Word!
The true life for the Christian isn’t in material things or outward observances, but in the life of the Spirit. After what God has done for us in Christ, we aren’t mere Christians on Sunday but offer up our body and soul, every day, every minute, as “living sacrifices” who grow in conformity to His will. How is this accomplished? Through a set of dead regulations? No, but through the loving and submissive study of His Word (Romans 12:1-2). A love affair with the Lord is unlike a human romance, of course, for He is God. But it’s no less real or intense.
A man who loves a woman wants to spend time with her. He wants to speak with her about the happenings of his day. No lover ever gives flowers because he has to, but because he simply adores her. The rule of love supersedes the law; a man will fulfill his obligations without trying because his heart is changed. To study the Scriptures as an end in and of themselves is dead legalism or mysticism. We study to know Him who loves us! And then we obey His Spirit who leads us into truth.
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” John 5:39-40 ESV
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:1-4 ESV
To love Christ is to go to the Scriptures in which He speaks to His children. And not just to read, nor to seek diligently for novelty or “hidden messages” but for the clarity of faith and love in and for Christ. The simplicity of life is faith in Christ that inspires us to do all that our hand finds to do – for Him, through Him, and in Him. Let Him define you, shape you, guide you, and bring you to Himself.
This is the new life. The old has passed away.
Recent Comments