It isn’t just sin that no longer has any power over you. You died to something else on the cross, too. You died to living according to rules.
I know, this is counter-intuitive. How could you possibly no longer live by rules? Isn’t that just a license to sin?
No, it’s actually a license to live exactly the way I designed you to live. Let me explain why.
I have come to live in you. I am now the life in you. I am the one living this life through you. And who am I? The eternal, all-powerful, all-sufficient, all-loving God.
Do you think I need laws to behave myself? Do I need rules to keep me in line? Of course not! I myself am the fulfillment of the entire law, the law of love. I forever live my life of perfect other-love. I live it in you. I live it through you. I do it effortlessly. It is who I am.
Now let’s hypothetically put you back under various laws and rules that you think you have to keep. What has just happened? Your focus has immediately left me. Your focus is no longer on the one living through you. It’s now on the laws that you are supposed to keep. And where does that take you? Back into self-effort! You are now trying your best to keep the rules that you’ve been given. And where does self-effort lead you? Into defeat, because you were never meant to live this life on your own. Self-reliance doesn’t work. The law doesn’t keep you from sin. It actually empowers sin.
Do you see why I say, “You died to the law”? That’s because the law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, had a specific purpose. Its job was to show you that you were a sinner, and in need of a Savior. But once that job was done, once you were joined to me, you were no longer under the law. You died to it. You couldn’t be under it, not if I was to be the one living in and through you.
Do you see why? You can either trust in your efforts to keep laws and rules, or you can trust me to be living my life through you. You can’t do both.
You can choose to put yourself under law, but there’s no life there. No law can give you life, because only I am the life. The law will have the same effect on you as before. Only this time it won’t show you that you are a guilty sinner. It will show that you are a failing saint—failing through your self-effort.
I delivered you from all that. You died to the law so that you could be joined to me. So that you could be one spirit with me. So that I could come live inside you, and through you live my perfect life of love. I produce my own fruit through you now. It comes from me.
And what, on your end, is the operating principle of this life? Faith. It all comes by faith. You receive by faith. You don’t receive through your self-effort to keep laws or rules.
The incredible news is that I brought you out of what is not life, into the wonder of me. I don’t ask you to produce a life pleasing to the Father. I live a life pleasing to him already. I live it in you, through you, as you. Receive that. Simply receive.
I’ve said all of this before:
[You] were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:4-6)
For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” … the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “He who practices them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us … (Galatians 3:10-13)
For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. (Galatians 3:21)
Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. (Galatians 3:24-25)
They don’t understand that Christ gives to those who trust in him everything they are trying to get by keeping his laws. He ends all of that. (Romans 10:4)
… the power of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56)
This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Galatians 3:2-3)
It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)
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