Earlier this week, Ryan Fregoso shared a link on Facebook to “25 Christian Memes That Are Funny Because They’re True”. So I thought I’d share a few of them with you this morning.
[Show memes]
This last one is particularly relevant this morning:
[But officer, I’m under grace, not law]
No matter how true that statement might be theologically. I’m pretty sure that one isn’t going to work, especially if you get pulled over in Oro Valley,
We were introduced to the idea that we’re not under the law but under grace several weeks ago in Romans 6. And this morning, we’re going to come back to that idea and look at it in some more detail.
I think we would all agree intellectually that it is true that once we commit our lives to Jesus and trust completely in Him that we no longer live under the law, but rather under grace. But I also know how easy it is for us to misunderstand exactly what that means – and does not mean. And I’ve also observed over the years just how easy it is for Christians to fall right back into the trap of living under the law and not even recognize it. I’ve certainly done that myself.
There are at least two ways we do that. One is to think of Jesus as a new “law-giver” and then attempt to earn His favor by following the “new list” of laws that He gives. The other, more common way, is to view Jesus as the means to finally be able to obey the “old list”. Often those approaches are voiced something like this: “It’s just not possible to [fill in the blank] and still be a good Christian, or its counterpart “If you want to be a good Christian you must [fill in the blank].
That mindset seem to be particularly prevalent when it comes to things that we’re really passionate about – whether that be a preferred worship style, a particular ministry that we’re involved in, personal convictions that we’ve developed or even our political preferences.
But apparently that is not anything new, since Paul had to address this very same issue in the early church nearly 2,000 years ago. So let’s see if we can’t let Paul teach us what it means to live under grace and not under the law and see if we can’t develop some practical ways to make sure we do that in our lives.
As we’ve found consistently in our study of Romans, it’s always critical to make sure we consider each passage in its proper context. So go ahead and take out your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 6 and I’ll begin with a verse we examined several weeks ago – verse 14:
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
(Romans 6:14 ESV)
Paul then goes on to explain the first statement there - For sin will have no dominion over you… - in verses 15-23 of chapter 6. In those verses, Paul uses the word “sin” seven times and he uses the synonyms “impurity” and “lawlessness” three more times. We spent a couple weeks on those verses, developing the idea that Jesus has freed us from slavery to sin, which never delivers what it promises, and He has made it possible for us to choose to be slaves to Jesus, who always delivers what He promises.
This morning we come to chapter 7, where Paul addresses the second part of that statement from Romans 16:4 - you are not under law but under grace. So, not surprisingly we’ll find that Paul uses the word “law” 23 times in this chapter and uses the synonym “commandment” an additional 5 times. Since this is such an important chapter, as well as a difficult one to grasp, we’ll work our way through it pretty methodically over the next few weeks. This morning we’ll look at the first six verses of the chapter. You can follow along as I read.
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
(Romans 7:1-6 ESV)
Although some of the details hear may be a bit murky, the overall idea Paul expresses here seems pretty clear:
Jesus did not come to lead us to the law
The law came to lead us to Jesus
Remember that Paul is primarily writing here to Jewish Christians who held the Law of Moses in very high regard. In fact, they held it in such high regard that they had made an idol out of it and they essentially worshipped the Law rather than the Law-giver. That is why Paul has to devote so much of his letter to refute the idea that it is possible to approach God based on adhering to the law. As Paul has emphasized repeatedly up to this point, the only way to be made right with God and be able to approach Him is through faith in Jesus alone.
But anticipating the objections that his readers would raise when it came to the idea of salvation based on God’s grace, Paul had to devote much of his letter to explaining what it means to live under grace and not under the law. And all that teaching comes to a culmination here in chapter 7.
So let’s see what Paul teaches us here about…
WHY WE LIVE UNDER GRACE, NOT THE LAW
1. The law is only binding as long as I live
Paul begins by stating an obvious fact that he knew all his readers would understand – the law is only binding on a person as long as he lives. I think that is an idea we would all agree with and one that is demonstrated in our culture on a regular basis.
When Micah Johnson ambushed and killed five Dallas police officers on July 7 this year, he was never arrested or tried for those crimes. That is because he was killed by the police and once he was dead, he was no longer subject to the law.
And in order to reinforce the point he is making, Paul uses the illustration of marriage. It is important to note that Paul is only using marriage as an illustration here, not giving us any kind of detailed teaching about marriage. And just like the illustration of slavery that Paul used in the last chapter, we need to be careful not to carry this illustration too far.
Almost every wedding reinforces the point that Paul is making here doesn’t it? I can’t remember a wedding that I’ve been a part of where the wedding vows didn’t contain words like “‘til death do us part” or “as long as we both shall live”. Those words certainly convey the idea that the marriage relationship is intended to be binding on both parties until one of them dies. And when that happens, as Paul reminds us here, the remaining spouse is freed from the law of marriage.
2. I died to the law through Jesus
In verse 4, Paul goes on to say that everyone who is “in Christ” has died to the law through His body in the same way that a husband or wife is freed from the law of marriage by the death of his or her spouse.
You can probably see here why I said we need to be careful not to carry Paul’s illustration too far. You’ll notice here that it is not the law itself that died, but rather that it is the disciple of Jesus who has died.
Paul returns here to the idea he first expressed in chapter 6, that by placing our faith in Jesus we are united with Him so intimately that His death on the cross becomes our death to sin and to the law. But, as we saw repeatedly in chapter 6, that doesn’t mean that we’ve been freed from the power of sin and the law so that we can either engage in a lifestyle of sin or even to just “dabble” in a little bit of sin from time to time.
As Paul points out in verse 5 that is what our lives were like while we still lived “in the flesh”. Paul reminds us that before being united with Jesus through faith that the law actually aroused our sinful passions and resulted in the kind of fruit that only brings death. The idea there seems to be that when we were living under law, that the law actually served to encourage us to sin rather than limiting our sin. And unfortunately, even for a disciple of Jesus, if we choose to go back to living under the law that is exactly what happens, isn’t it?
Let me illustrate. If you were to walk by a freshly painted handrail where the paint still looked wet, you probably wouldn’t touch it. But if somebody puts up a sign that says “Wet Paint – Do Not Touch” how many of you are going to touch that rail just because there is a sign there? Or have you ever been driving on an unfamiliar road where you wonder what the speed limit is because you haven’t seen any signs? So you tend to drive pretty carefully, maybe even well below the actual speed limit. But what happens as soon as you see the speed limit sign? You immediately figure that you can get away with going at least 5 mph over the posted speed limit. Right?
So dying to the law as a result of being united with Jesus frees us up from that tendency of the law to actually arouse our sinful passions. And…
3. Therefore, I am free to live in a love relationship rather than a law relationship
In the second part of verse 4, we learn that the reason we have been freed from the law through our unity with Jesus is so that we can enter into a new relationship in which we choose to belong to Jesus out of love rather than serve the law out of obligation. In a sense, Jesus is our new husband. So now instead of being married to the demanding, unloving, uncaring, impersonal husband of the law, our death to the law has freed us up to be united to a loving, caring, eternally alive person.
Paul reinforces this idea in his letter to the Galatian church:
So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
(Galatians 3:24-26 ESV)
Here we clearly see our main theme for this morning:
Jesus did not come to lead us to the law
The law came to lead us to Jesus
The law was never intended to make it possible for us to come to God through keeping it. From the very beginning, it was intended by God to be a guardian that would lead people to Jesus so that we could be justified by faith in Him. As we’re going to see in a moment, that doesn’t mean that once the law has served its purpose as a guardian to lead people to Jesus that it no longer serves any purpose at all in our lives. But it is certainly clear here the reason Jesus came to this earth was to enable us to enter into a love relationship with Him and His Father, not just to help us keep the law better.
I know the analogy isn’t perfect at all, but this seems a lot to me like what happened when our kids got married. As far as Mary and I are concerned Derek and Amber became our children, not merely in a legal sense, but rather because they love Pam and Pete So because they love and have committed themselves to our children, we love them as if they are our own children.
In a similar way, when we unite with Jesus in a love relationship, God considers us to be His children, and not just in a legal sense.
4. Death to the law produces fruitful servants, not sinners
This is the main point Paul has been trying to make all along. Death to the law doesn’t mean that we are free to sin more. In fact, it does just the opposite. AS Paul makes clear in verse 6, dying to the law frees us up to serve not according to the old way of the written law, but rather according to the new way of the Sprit. Again, we find that Paul expands on this idea in another of his letters:
And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
(2 Corinthians 3:3-6 ESV)
There is obviously more in those 4 verses that we can possibly cover this morning, but what I want you to see here is the idea that our love relationship with Jesus causes us to become “ministers of a new covenant” in which we love and serve others not just according to the letter of the law, but according to the Spirit.
That means that if I’m genuinely in a love relationship with Jesus, I won’t ever have the attitude of “How little can I do and still adhere to the letter of the law?” or “How much sin can I get away with and still be a good Christian?”
Instead, I will be motivated to serve others the very best I know how out of gratitude for what Jesus has done for me. And when I do that, as Paul reveals in verse 4, that produces fruit for God, rather than the fruit for death that comes from trying to serve the law.
Hopefully you can now see why I summarized this passage by saying that:
Jesus did not come to lead us to the law
The law came to lead us to Jesus
But a lot of what we’ve learned so far, although it certainly has some relevance for how we live our lives, has been somewhat theoretical. So as we close, I want to make this as practical as possible.
WHAT “DYING TO THE LAW” MEANS - AND DOES NOT MEAN - FOR ME
1. It does mean I am free from the demands of the law as a means for approaching God
Almost every religion, including some that call themselves “Christian” are based on the idea that the way one is able to approach God is through an impersonal system of performance in which one attempts to earn right standing with God. And frankly that is a terrifying way to live because how can you ever be sure that you have ever done enough to earn God’s favor?
But as Paul pointed out in the first 5 chapters of his letter, justification – being made right with God – is by faith alone. There is nothing that I can do, including trying to keep the law, that can ever earn God’s favor.
Here in chapter 7, Paul reveals that we are not only justified by grace alone, but that we are also sanctified, not by attempting to keep the law on our own, but rather in the same way we are justified – by grace through faith alone.
So because my relationship with God is not dependent at all on anything I can do, dying to the law frees me up from the guilt and the worry of trying to approach God based on anything I do or don’t do. And that is such a great way to live!
2. It does mean that I don’t measure “spiritual maturity” based on adherence to the law
There are two ways we can get caught in this trap.
One is the way I measure my own spiritual maturity. As I mentioned at the beginning of this message, it is so easy to fall into this trap and to reduce our relationship with Jesus to some set of rules. And when we do that usually one of two things happen. At one extreme, we can be deceived into thinking that we’re spiritually mature because we’ve checked all the boxes on our “spiritual to-do list” when the reality is that we really don’t know Jesus any better than we did a month ago or a year ago or five years ago.
At the other extreme, we can beat ourselves up because we didn’t read our Bible one day or we missed church one Sunday or failed to engage in some other spiritual discipline. And neither of those extremes is healthy.
The other way that we can get caught in this trap is to evaluate the spiritual maturity of others based on how well they adhere to some list of rules that we’ve developed. Jesus often condemned the Pharisees for doing that, but before we’re too quick to join that condemnation, we need to evaluate our own lives to make sure that we’re not doing the same thing. While I don’t think that any of us intentionally seek to be a Pharisee, it is so easy to slip into this trap and not even realize it.
• I can do that when I try to hold others to my own personal convictions. For instance, Mary and I made the decision before we had children that she would not work outside the home while our kids were young. But had we told someone else that made a different decision for their family that meant that they weren’t spiritually mature, that would have been wrong.
Unfortunately, this idea of trying to hold others to our own personal convictions has overflowed into this election season. There is no doubt that this election has presented a real dilemma for Christians and mature disciples who have earnestly been seeking the will of God have come to a number of different conclusions about what they believe God is leading them to do. I was in a meeting with a group of pastors that I respect a lot earlier this week, and even among that group there was a wide range of convictions about how each of them planned to vote. And that is actually to be expected because while we certainly have some broad principles in Scripture that ought to guide how we vote, we certainly don’t have any specific guidance about how to vote in specific races.
There is nothing wrong with making a choice of candidates that we’ve decided to vote for and to even passionately support that candidate and try to persuade others to vote for him or her.
But the problem comes in when we begin to evaluate someone else’s spiritual maturity based on those personal convictions. My heart has been broken over the past few months by statements I have heard and read that have either outright claimed or at least implied that our standing as a “good Christian”, whatever that might mean, is dependent on who we choose to vote for or not vote for.
I understand that some of you are very passionate about this election and that’s fine. But when this election is over, no matter who wins, our task is still going to be the same – to make disciples. So let’s not let Satan divert us from that task by dividing us by being Pharisees when it comes to the election.
• This weekend our elders held a retreat and much of the time was spent working on developing a discipleship pathway that we can use to help people mature as disciples of Jesus. And there are certainly some things that ought to characterize a mature disciple – things like reading the Bible regularly, consistent participating in corporate worship and in relationships with other Christians outside of just Sunday mornings, being baptized, becoming a church member, giving regularly and sacrificially and sharing their faith with others. But again we need to be very careful not to judge the spiritual maturity of others based on outward measures like which ministries or programs that person either does or does not participate.
3. It does not mean I am free from the moral requirements of the law
Dying to the law does not mean that we are no longer obligated to keep the specific moral commandments in the law. If that were the case, it just doesn’t make any sense that Jesus, Paul and the other New Testament writers would reinforce the moral requirements of the law and even expand on them so frequently.
But what has changed is the way we attempt to adhere to those requirements. As Paul reminds us in verse 6, we serve in the new way of the Spirit. And he is going to explain that idea even more in chapter 8 where he writes:
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
(Romans 8:3-4 ESV)
We’ll obviously study that passage in much more detail in a few weeks, but for now, let me just say that the way that we fulfill the righteous requirements of the law is by walking in the Spirit and not according to the flesh. In other words, while I haven’t been freed from the moral requirements of the law, the only way I can fulfill them is by yielding my life to the Holy Spirit, not trying to keep them on my own.
4. It does not mean that “good works” have no place
While our good works obviously don’t earn us favor with God, they obviously have an important place in the life of a Christian. As we’ve seen frequently here in Romans, serving God, serving others and bearing fruit for God are the evidence that we have genuinely committed our lives to God through faith in Jesus. That’s an idea that we’ll continue to develop as we continue our study.
Living in bondage to the law is a frustrating, defeating and miserable way to live life because no matter how hard we try we will never measure up to any set of rules. But the good news is that…
Jesus did not come to lead us to the law
The law came to lead us to Jesus
And if we’ll allow the law to lead us to Jesus and we place our faith in Him alone, He has promised to release us from that burden and draw us into a loving relationship with Him.
As we close this morning, I’m going to give all of us some time to pray and to ask God to reveal to each of us how He wants us to apply this passage and this message to our lives.
In your sermon insert, I ‘ve given you a few questions to help guide you during that time. So let’s pray.
[Prayer time]
Questions to consider:
1. Have I been attempting to gain access to Go through my own efforts to keep a set of rules?
2. Have I judged my spiritual maturity or that of others based on adherence to some set of rules?
Actions to take:
1. If I’ve never done it before, commit my life to God through faith in Jesus.
2. Confess any sin that God reveals as I pray.
3. If required, make a commitment to seek forgiveness from others I may have offended.
4. Pray for God to help me walk by the Spirit, and not by the letter of the law.
