Free From the Law
Romans 8:1-11
Romans 6:14 contains these words "...for ye are not under the law, but under grace." This words have become, as John McArthur, points out "a sort of an open door for all kinds of misdeeds and misbehavior. This statement, "You are not under law," has been misinterpreted to free people as freedom from any obligation to the revealed law of God." But if this is not what is meant then what is the freedom which Christians enjoy? Romans 8 provides us with the answer.
I. Free from the condemnation of the Law
A. Romans 8:1 "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus..."
B. Romans 3:22b-3 " For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"
C. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;
D. When Adam sinned, he involved all his posterity in his condemnation ( Romans 5:18 -19), as we have been born in His likeness. Everyone has inherited a fallen nature. All areby virtue of that nature are guilty beyond question and stand convicted and sentenced to eternal condemnation.
E. Ephesians 2:3 describes the state of people without Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior when Pauls says, "we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others."
F. All men and all women on the face of the earth, through all of time and human history, are, by nature, children of wrath. That is to say they are objects of divine wrath. They are targets for God's judgment. All have sinned. All have come short of the glory of God. All stand under the wrath of God facing eternal judgment in an endless hell of torment. - John Piper
G. John 5:24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment (condemnation), but has passed from death into life."
H. John 3:18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
I. "No condemnation (judgment)" (v.1). The word "condemnation" literally means "judgment coming down (on someone)." God’s judgment is not going to come down upon me! If I were still under the law of sin and death then I would be under God’s condemnation (sin demands judgment, death and condemnation - the penalty for sin must be paid!). But, praise God, Calvary took care of it all. God condemned His Son (Rom.8:3) so that I might never be condemned - McGee
J. "There is no condemnation, there is no hell for me,
The torment and the fire my eyes shall never see;
For me there is no sentence, for me has death no stings,
Because the Lord Who saved me shall shield me with His wings.
No angel, and no Heaven, no throne, nor power, nor might,
No love, no tribulation, nor anger, fear nor fight,
No height, no depth, no creature that has been or can be,
Can drive me from Thy bosom, can sever me from Thee."—Paul Gerhardt Romans Chapter 8 commences with 'No condemnation' and ends with `No separation'
II. Free from the bondage of Legalism
A. 1 Timothy 1:8 " But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully."
B. God's law shows us a need that only God's grace can supply.
C. Romans 8:3-4 "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
D. The law could never save anyone. The only way that a person could be saved by keeping the law would be to keep it perfectly without violating one iota - not in a deed, not in a thought, nor in an attitude of mind or heart. It would require absolute perfection before God.
E. Romans 3:12 " There is none who does good, no, not one."
F. Charles Hodge points out the overwhelming need of humanity:
"Our guilt is great because our sins are exceedingly numerous. It is not merely outward acts of unkindness and dishonesty with which we are chargeable; our habitual and characteristic state of mind is evil in the sight of God.
Our pride, vanity, and indifference to His will and to the welfare of others, our selfishness, our loving the creature more than the Creator, are continuous violations of His holy law.
We have never been or done what that law requires us to be and to do. We have never had that delight in the divine perfection, that sense of dependence and obligation, that fixed purpose to do the will and promote the glory of God, which constitute the love which is our fist and highest duty.
We are always sinners; we are at all times and under all circumstances in opposition to God, because we are never what His law requires us to be."
G. Scott has often remarked that we need to understand "God doesn't grade on a curve!" Nothing short of perfection is acceptable.
H. Romans 3:20 "Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin."
I. Evangelist Fred Brown used three images to describe the purpose of the law. First he likened it to a dentist's little mirror, which he sticks into the patient's mouth. With the mirror he can detect any cavities. But he doesn't drill with it or use it to pull teeth. It can show him the decayed area or other abnormality, but it can't provide the solution. Brown then drew another analogy. He said that the law is also like a flashlight. If suddenly at night the lights go out, you use it to guide you down the darkened basement stairs to the electrical box. When you point it toward the fuses, it helps you see the one that is burned out. But after you've removed the bad fuse, you don't try to insert the flashlight in its place. You put in a new fuse to restore the electricity. In his third image, Brown likened the law to a plumb line. When a builder wants to check his work, he uses a weighted string to see if it's true to the vertical. But if he finds that he has made a mistake, he doesn't use the plumb line to correct it. He gets out his hammer and saw. The law points out the problem of sin; it doesn't provide a solution.
J. Galatians 3:24 "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith."
III. Free from the law of sin
A. 1 John 5:19 "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one."
B. Romans 8:2 "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."
C. Romans 8:2 mentions two laws. Illustration: the law of gravity and the law of aerodynamics. The law of gravity says that a large, heavy metal object in the sky must fall to the earth and crash (the airplane must crash!). But the law of aerodynamics is a higher law and overcomes the law of gravity and enables the heavy metal airplane to soar and fly and not crash. By the law of sin and death I fail and fall and crash (Rom.7:23-25) but by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus I am able to live a life that pleases God (Rom.8:2).
D. Romans 6:14 "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace."
E. Christ who indwells the believer enables us to do what He has commanded us to do that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us as we do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
F. Warren Wiersbe wrote that..."Freedom does not mean I am able to do whatever I want to do. That’s the worst kind of bondage. Freedom means I have been set free to become all that God wants me to be, to achieve all that God wants me to achieve, to enjoy all that God wants me to enjoy. When God saved you, He gave you a new life, not a new law; as you yield to that life, you obey His law.
G. Ephesians 2:8-10 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
H. J Vernon McGee said that "Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone. It will produce something. After a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he will want to “continue in His Word.” The proof of faith is continuing with the Savior." (Ed note: And that is the person who will truly experience the freedom that Jesus makes possible!) (McGee, J V: Thru the Bible Commentary: Nashville: Thomas Nelson
I. "The truth," Jesus said, "shall make you free" (John 8:32). On the night of the emancipation of the Jamaica slaves in 1838, a mahogany coffin was made, and a grave was dug. Into that coffin they crowded all the various relics and remnants of their previous bondage and sorrow. The whips, the torture irons, the branding irons, the coarse frocks and shirts, and great hat, fragments of the treadmill, the handcuffs—they placed in the coffin and screwed down the lid. At the stroke of midnight the coffin was lowered into its grave: and then the whole of that throng of thousands celebrated their redemption from thralldom by singing the Doxology! It is a picture of the Christian's buried past.—The Daum.
J. When the British Government sent word to Jamaica that slavery was at an end, every slave had the right to go free. There no doubt that there were slaves who did not believe it and went on with their slavery. They did not accept the fact that slavery in Jamaica had been abolished; those who did believe it got rid of their shackles and were free. Jesus has come to set us free from the bondage of our old nature, free from slavery to sin, free to obey God, free to live for God. The freedom of Redemption is a work of God, but in order to have salvation you must exercise faith in Christ and what He has done.
