Free from the Rules

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Don Filcek; Romans 7:1-6 Free from the Rules

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.
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As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor. And today is Mother's Day, as he mentioned. And just like every year,
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I recommend that you reach out to your mother if you still can. That means that if there's unspoken gratitude,
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I'd encourage you to call her or go to her and speak that gratitude. If there's unresolved conflict,
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I would encourage you to call her and go to her and resolve that conflict. If there's a healthy and good relationship, call her or visit her and enjoy that good relationship.
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But I would encourage you to take advantage of this day that our nation has set aside as a holiday to remember mothers.
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In God's grand design, he's determined to bring our life out of our parents. That's an awesome mystery of the way that he's created things.
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We are rooted to fundamental relationships. And so there's a reality that relationship is a very part of the fabric of our lives and who we are.
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And the word that best is expressed, really scripture gives us the best word that ought to be the pattern for our relationship with our mother.
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It is honor. Honor is the word that we are given in that context. And so I would encourage you to figure out, each one of us on this day, what it would mean for us to honor our mother.
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I'm gonna be moving us right along into introducing a message for mothers and for fathers and for children.
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All of us here have a message from God through his word. I'm convinced that that's really what we need.
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And I don't know if you guys have noticed that, but here at Recast, we sometimes will take a special service, a special even sermon series for Easter, for Christmas.
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I think maybe once or twice, I've preached something that kind of was a little bit more towards mothers on Mother's Day.
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But by and large, I'm gonna kind of stick with my sermon series. And part of that is the strong conviction that what all of us need in our lives, even on special days like today, is
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God's word and his truth flowing into us so that we can, in turn, live a life of faith before him in this next week.
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And I'm convinced that we all need this message that we're gonna hear this morning, mothers included. And it's
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God's word that breaks down the lies in our hearts and brings us back to the truth. So this next passage in the book of Romans is probably one of the least believed and least applied sections of scripture.
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Now, how many of you would say that you grew up with some significant laws and rules centered on your spiritual life?
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Go ahead and raise your hand, keep your hand up. If you'd say, I grew up in a church or in a family or in a relationship with laws and rules, tons of laws and rules.
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That's a surprisingly low number. I expected to see more hands and some of you just aren't awake and you're going, who is this guy?
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Does he really want me to raise my hand? But yeah, I think probably a lot of us know what it means to live under laws and rules.
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And so this text is going to address that and really kind of in a way that maybe is uncomfortable for some of us, those of us who maybe even would raise our hand and say, we like rules, we like to have checklists, we like to have that kind of structure around us.
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But so far in scripture, so far in the book of Romans, Paul's established for us that we were dead in our unrighteousness, we were dead in our ungodliness, we had no hope of saving ourselves.
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But then Jesus came and rescued us by dying on the cross to take the punishment on himself that our unrighteousness and ungodliness merited or demanded or deserved.
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You see, Jesus took the wrath of the Father on himself so that we can no longer be punished for the sins that he's already paid for.
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Our sins already punished on him for us. And so receiving
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Jesus in his sacrifice for us is the only way that we can be saved and brought into the newness of life that we talked about last week.
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But now Paul moves on and has been moving on throughout the last couple of messages to the logical question, what about our lives after we're saved?
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There's a big word in theology called sanctification. It's the process by which God is making us more and more like him.
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And how do we live? And what does sanctification look like in the life of a believer? How are we drawing closer to him day by day?
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We are saved by grace, and now we've got a bunch of rules to follow, right? Now we obey by law.
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Now we're sanctified by law, right? Well, not exactly. There's one thing that Paul wants to make clear in the text that we're gonna be looking at this morning.
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And it may be new to some of you that have been kicking around the church for a while. Some of you have been around the church and you haven't heard it taught this way.
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You haven't really even understood this passage. Maybe this one hasn't been really brought to the forefront of your mind.
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Maybe you've never heard a message on it. But you do not live by law any longer. You do not live by law any longer.
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That is not the way of the Christian life. Laws and rules and regulations are not the primary pathway to a
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God -honoring life. The law is a way to pride. The law is a way to competition.
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The law is a way to comparison with others and trying to push others down or trying to lift ourselves up, trying to be a head above the rest so that God would pay more attention to me.
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They're a way of self -dependence. And so listen carefully as we hear what God wants to say about our relationship to laws and rules and particularly to his
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Old Testament law. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans 7, one through six. We're gonna read this before the band comes to lead us in a time of praise.
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But Romans 7, one through six is our text. And if you don't have a
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Bible with you or a means to navigate, a device or whatever, grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you. You can turn over to Romans 7 in that.
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And if you don't have a Bible at home, take that one with you. We want everybody to have a copy of God's word at home that they could read.
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But Romans 7, one through six, recasts God's precious, true word that has the power by his spirit to transform our lives by the hearing it and by believing it and by obeying it.
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So listen up. Or do you not know, brothers, for I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.
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For a married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
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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.
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And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, 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.
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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.
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Let's pray. Father, I wanna thank you so much for the opportunity that we have gathered together today on this day, a day set aside, again, for honoring mothers.
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And Father, I know that there are some in this room that that is a joy. I know for some that is a pain.
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Some are missing moms. Some have not had the opportunity to be a mom and would love to.
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And Father, I just recognize that this brings a whole host of emotions and a whole group of feelings,
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Father, I pray that you would help us to correctly discern what it means to honor our mothers on this day.
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And then further, as we dive into this text and we think about our relationship to you and the way that we move forward in this life, the immense freeing that is genuinely ours in grace through Christ.
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And I pray that we would then live lives of love fueled by the spirit and not fueled by going back to that competitiveness and that comparison game and that attempt to try to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.
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Father, a life that many of us have known and maybe some are still in, a life of just thinking of religion and you as a taskmaster.
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And Father, I pray that you would turn us away from being law keepers to being God lovers, those who love you.
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And Father, I pray that that would be a reality through this passage this morning that as we contemplate and consider the salvation that is ours in Christ, that our hearts would be set free to worship you with enthusiasm, with joy and delight.
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I thank you for drawing us together for this opportunity that we have to praise and worship you now in Jesus' name. Well, yeah, you can go to be seated.
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But remember that if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you can take advantage of that in the back and you're not gonna distract me if you need to get up.
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Restrooms are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those. And then please keep your
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Bibles open to Romans 7, one through six. Romans 7, one through six is our text and we're gonna be walking through that and kind of taking it apart verse by verse and thought by thought.
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And so having that open in front of you will help probably keep your focus on what we're talking about and see the flow.
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I wanna start off by saying I was raised by my mom and my mom had some rules. How many of you would say your parents had some rules in your household?
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I think a lot of us did. As a matter of fact, I would say that I believe that it would be accurate to say my mom could lay down the law.
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Now, any of you have a mom like that? Or a dad like that? Lay down the law, that's what
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I'm talking about. And like many families, as a young child I remember feeling like the laws, particularly moving into the teenage years,
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I felt like the laws and the rules were a little bit arbitrary, a little bit inconsistent, and a little bit unfair.
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Anybody with me on that? Anybody ever experience that as a child? You were kind of like, this doesn't seem fair, this doesn't seem to be consistent.
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How come he gets to do this and I don't? How come she gets to do this and I don't? And some of you are there, some of you are living there right now.
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And some of you are my kids and you're living there. So, but hey, that's the way it is. But as I reflect back on my childhood in light of this passage,
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I realize that there's something I could never have understood as a young child. My obedience was meant to flow out of a loving relationship with my mother.
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That's what it was supposed to do. It would have been completely fair for my mother to say, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, right?
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Would that have been a fair thing for her to say? Because the nature of it is that her rules were for my blessing and benefit.
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I didn't see that as a child, now as a parent, and the flip side of it, I'm like, oh, I see what she was doing. I get it a little bit more now.
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It makes more sense. Her intention behind those rules was not for my harm, but for my blessing, for my flourishing, that I might make it to 18 alive.
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You know, the whole rule, you know, like play in the street, you know? There's a reason that you don't let your kids play in the road.
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I mean, but mom, dad, it's a nice flat place. You can throw a football really far on it, it's great. You're not gonna make it long if that's not a rule.
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But God has already told us through the apostle Paul in chapter six, verse 14, that we are not slaves under the law, but we are now under grace.
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So our relationship to the law, of God particularly, has shifted. But last week,
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Paul established that we are now to be those who are in a, quote unquote, from the text last week, we are obedient from the heart.
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Not obedient from duty, not slaves who are owned by him and therefore we just do exactly what he says without question or without thought, but we are obedient from the heart.
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Our love, this is really funny, been under the weather this week and then it hits right now.
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But let me take a drink and then we'll jump back in. This is always so awkward. There, we got that out of the way,
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I think. Our love and our affections are supposed to be engaged in our obedience, that's the point of kind of last week and kind of looking at the way that our sanctification and the way our relationship with God runs.
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And so it's no longer merely an act of the will to obey God for those who belong to him in Christ, but it is our whole selves that respond in glad, joyful, loving obedience because of the great love that he has poured out on us, the great love he has given to us.
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But then the question becomes, for those of you that are a little bit more law -minded, those of you who like rules, those of you who like to have just give me the rules and I'll follow them, give me a checklist and I'll do them today.
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The question becomes what exactly do I obey? What's the content of my obedience?
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And Paul will make a clear case that as far as we can get in this text, what he's gonna make clear is that we are no longer, you, if you are in Christ, if you've asked him to save you, you've asked him to forgive you, then you indeed are no longer, hear me carefully, church, you are no longer duty -bound to keep that Old Testament law any longer.
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You are no longer duty -bound to keep the law. You're going, well, wait a minute, aren't we supposed to keep some? We'll get there, but you're not duty -bound to the law.
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In verse one, we can just jump in, we'll go through the flow of the text. In verse one, he starts with a strong statement, stronger than the
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ESV translators had the guts to make it in English. The ESV translators translated it, do you not know, the direct translation, if you took the
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Greek straight into English, it would be are you ignorant? Are you ignorant?
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Do you not know? Are you ignorant? He is speaking to the church in Rome and he's saying, you should at least know this.
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I'm gonna give you some basic law 101 here, and you should have this kind of understanding.
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And yet, as I said in my introduction, many of us have honestly been ignorant about the way we're supposed to be living this life as a follower of Christ.
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We have not given this the thought that it's due, but we run with fuzzy notions and fuzzy thoughts and laws that have been handed down to us and traditions from our parents, traditions that we've gathered from our pastors, traditions that we've gathered from society around us and from maybe a cursory glance at scripture from time to time, without taking in the whole counsel of God, and therefore, we have a wrong -minded and ignorant perspective on the way that we're supposed to live and follow
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Christ. Paul knows and takes for granted here in verse one that his audience has some knowledge of the law already.
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So he says, I mean, basically, what he's kind of getting at in verse one is I don't feel like I need to go into every nuance of the law.
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That would take us a long time here this morning if I was gonna explain the entire Old Testament law, which really would be counterproductive for what he's trying to accomplish here anyways in saying that you're no longer under it.
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But he says, I think you already have a good flavor of the law. You already know it. And so he's not gonna define that for him.
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He's gonna take for granted that all of you have, how many of you would say, I have some understanding when we talk about law? Yeah, I have a notion of that.
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So he's saying, I feel like you've got it. I feel like you've got the law as much as you need to know for my argument here.
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But now he goes straight into a common sense truism in the next verse. The law, he says, is binding on a person only as long as he or she lives.
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This is common sense. Don't you know this? Cadavers don't get subpoenaed.
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You don't end up in a court of law as a stiff. It doesn't happen that way. Of course, leave it to America to make an exception with estate taxes and death taxes.
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The IRS has figured out a way to allow the law to follow us into the grave, get in your pocket while you're in the casket.
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Sorry, that's a different thing altogether. But did that get too political? Someone will correct me on that later.
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But in verses two and three, Paul gives a legal illustration that could really take us down a rabbit trail if we're not careful, because he uses a hot -button topic as an illustration.
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It's just merely illustrative that he mentions marriage in the text. It's an illustration.
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He says that a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If the husband dies, then she is released of her legal obligations.
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Her legal vows are fulfilled, and she can go on to marry somebody else. Now, I wanna be careful to explain that Paul is not strictly here speaking of the broad perspective, every nuance of the
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Mosaic laws concerning marriage. Remarriage was permitted to the wife in the event of divorce.
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It was very clear, and you can, if you have any questions about that, you can come and talk with me about that later, but that's not the point of the message, and so we're not gonna delve into it here.
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But he is speaking of, in this context, straight -up adultery on the part of a wife that makes her an adulteress.
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So in verse three, he says, she will be called an adulteress if she moves in with another man while she is still married to her living husband.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and therefore would not be an adulteress if she chooses to marry another man and move in with him.
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Paul is here simply stating that a woman who goes off and sleeps with another man while married is rightly called an adulteress, but a woman whose husband has died is free to marry any eligible man.
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This is not a passage, by the way, that's seeking to rope us into a discussion about divorce and remarriage. Again, a very hot -button topic, and a hostile topic, and a controversial topic in our culture today, but that would kind of be ironic if we got sidetracked by this.
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It would be an ironic application of a text that's seeking to declare us dead to the law. Nothing would be more ironic than arguing the nuances of the law from a passage that is saying that we are set free from the law.
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Wouldn't that be kind of funny if we dove into a nuanced discussion about, well, does the law allow this?
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Does the law allow that? When he's saying the big picture, big picture overarching statement from this is you're free from the law.
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But understanding this point of the law is fundamental to getting down to Paul's main point in our text. It's just simply this.
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Marriage laws serve as a great illustration of the way that a death sets a person free from a certain and very specific law.
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And now the core of our text is found in verse four because he's gonna now personalize it. He says, likewise, like the marriage illustration, like the one who has had a spouse die and is now free to marry another, we have died to the law.
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Now, we know that he's already declared us to be dead to sin in the previous texts. We are dead to our old slavery to sin is what he was telling us in the previous couple of passages.
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And we are now, he says, declared to be dead to the law. This death should be read in a context as similar to the death to sin that we talked about already in the book of Romans.
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Dead to sin did not mean that you are no longer capable of sinning. Do you remember that? It just simply means that you are no longer enslaved.
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The enslavement to sin is now broken in your life and you need not obey that old master any longer.
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And so, in this text, it should be taken the same way. In this way, our death to the law is also a breaking of mastery and enslavement to the law.
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No longer enslaved to sin, no longer enslaved to law. It is not saying that it's impossible for a
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Christian to go back to the law, but we need not go back to the law any longer.
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So let's stop for a moment and consider the beauty of these two deaths taken together. We've already talked about death to sin and really this text is primarily about death to the law, but the way that those two things come together,
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I think, covers all of us. It takes care of all of our primary issues. I believe that each one sitting in this room relates more to enslavement to one or the other, more to enslavement to sin.
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Now, it's probably a mix of the two. Probably before you came to faith in Christ, you were a little bit enslaved to sin, a little bit enslaved to law, and that mix was a little bit different for each one of us.
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Do you see what I'm saying? But each one of us was enslaved to both sin and law.
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And either you were a slave to sin before you came to faith in Christ, which means that you partied and lived for yourself, your
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God was pleasure and you sat yourself down in the middle of everything, or you were a slave to law, you were a goody two shoes, you were better than everybody else, you prided yourself in being that good little boy or that good little girl, and you sat yourself down in the middle of it all.
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Do you hear the common ground there? Two very different masters, one enslaved to sin and partying, the other enslaved to religiosity and law.
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Who's the center of both of those? Self. Self. Two very different masters with the same outcome.
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Earlier in chapter six, Paul tackled slavery to sin and identified that in Christ, we need no longer heed the voice of that master.
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And now in chapter seven, he is tackling the law and identifies that we need no longer heed the voice of that master.
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But right now, it would be wise for each one of us to identify our specific temptation, which master calls you louder?
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Either you are more prone to be drawn back into a life of sin and corrupt living, you know yourself, and you can say probably right now, it probably doesn't take much discernment, doesn't take a lengthy internal conversation to determine these things, but it would be wise to have it right now in your head.
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Are you more likely drawn back into a sin of corrupt living? Or are you more prone to be drawn back into the comfortable forms of law that make it feel like you can control your life and even better yet, control others around you?
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Either one is less than what God wants for you in this newness of life by his spirit.
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We have died to the law through, it says in the text, the body of Christ, what could that mean? This is a metaphor for his broken body, his death, to fulfill it for us.
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It's a communion type metaphor. His body, just like on the night he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and broke it, and he said, this is my body broken for you.
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As often as you eat it together, eat it in remembrance of me, which we're gonna do here at the end of the service.
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So ask yourself this, when did I die to the law? We died at the point of his sacrifice.
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And it's very important how we talk about the law moving forward because in a very real sense, the law was not broken.
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The law was not broken. The law has not been denigrated. It was not exposed as worthless, but instead at the cross, the law was held and lifted high as the perfect law keeper, fulfilled the entire
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Old Testament law on your behalf for you. Do not for a minute think that our death to law makes the law worthless.
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It makes it precious. That our savior would fulfill every single nuance of God's law on our behalf is immense and amazing.
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Let that truth settle in on you. Paul isn't setting out to make you despise the law.
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No, no, no. He's seeking to make sure that we correctly apply the phrase, it is finished.
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It is finished. It truly is. Let the wonder of that phrase as it applies to the law in your life produce awe and wonder and thanks and gratitude and joy and love for him today.
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He has fulfilled the law on your behalf. Every stroke of the law, every written sentence and phrase fulfilled in Christ for you.
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You who could not keep the law are now seen as a law abider and complete in the law because he did it all, even fulfilling the sacrificial system in his body on the cross in his death.
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Over the life of every believer, everybody who genuinely has their faith and trust in Christ, over every believer is stamped the phrase, it is finished.
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The law has been completed on your behalf. And just like the marriage illustration, now that we have died to the law, we're now set free to belong to another.
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We're not married to the law anymore. And so now we can take on another. We now belong to him who has been raised from the dead.
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In his flesh, he kept the law. In his body, he fulfilled the Old Testament requirements of sacrifice.
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And now in love, now in joy, we belong to him. And look at verse four, in order that we may now bear fruit.
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And bear fruit for God. Not in order that we may obey the law for God, but in order that we may bear fruit for God.
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Our salvation does indeed have good things as its goal, good works that are gonna be worked out in our lives, good fruit that we will bear.
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But they are not good works as a fulfillment of the law any longer, they are good works as a fulfillment of his gracious gift in our lives.
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An act of love has brought us into obedience. Not a command that produces fear of judgment, but an act of love that produces a loving response of obedience.
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Good fruit. One must first be set free from the old relationship with the law in order to be in relationship with Christ Jesus.
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You cannot belong to both the law and to Christ. Hear me carefully, recast. I fear that if there's any error in our midst that is probably owning some of us right now, it's probably this area of law.
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Do you belong to Christ or do you belong to the law? Are you playing religion? Are you trying to make yourself look better or are you trusting in what
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Christ has done on the cross for you? This is fundamental, this is very vital.
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You cannot belong to both the law and to Christ. Self -effort, self -improvement, self -dependency, these things cannot coexist with trust in his effort, trust in his work to improve us, or a dependency that is centered in Christ alone.
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And the result of this death, it says in the text, is of course bearing fruit for God. I can't help but think of the fruit of the spirit here.
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I think we're meant to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.
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These are all heart conditions. You ever try to produce those on your own? You ever try to just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be patient?
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Try that the next time you're sitting at the Secretary of State's office. Just go in there, grit your teeth, and be patient.
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Good luck with that, right? Or sitting in a traffic jam on I -94. Happens every week, right? So sitting in a traffic jam around 131 heading north, and there you are, stuck in traffic again.
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Patience, does that just bleed out of you? Just like, ooh, the aroma of patience is all over me.
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See one that I struggle with here? Maybe that's the one that God's putting his finger on in my life, but we can't produce these things on our own.
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All of these require, certainly you have, I mean, you have personalities, right? Some people just tend towards more patience, but nobody is spiritually patient on their own.
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All of these require the Spirit of God working in our heart through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.
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In verse five, Paul reminds us of what life is like for one that is living enslaved to law, and what many of us can testify to having experienced in our lives, in seasons and in times, and maybe before we came to faith in Christ, maybe the law really, some of you were just completely enslaved to a religious upbringing and to a relationship to God by trying to do all the good things for him, and hoping and hoping and hoping that he would be pleased with you.
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He says, when we live in the flesh, which is another way of saying living without God, while we lived as if the flesh was all that there is and our own effort was all that mattered, we found that the law would arouse, it says in the text, the law would have a work in us, it would arouse sinful passions within us.
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You see, what this is getting at is something that all of us have experienced. It might be a little confusing in the writing, but I think all of us know it.
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The very suggestion of what we ought not to do entices us to want to do it.
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You see, I could be driving along talking to Linda and doing 50 miles per hour, and the speed limit comes up and it says 60, and I wanna go 65.
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Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I was satisfied doing 55 a minute ago, but now that I see the sign, I wanna exceed it.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? That kind of nature within us is that sometimes the very suggestion of things,
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I think we all know what that means. The very mention of things forbidden ignite the fallen human heart with desire, or at least curiosity.
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I think we can all relate to what I would call an unholy curiosity.
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While I was writing this sermon, I began at this very point in the text to write out some things, and I quickly deleted them, because I realized that even as I wrote them, a curiosity was being ignited within me that was unholy.
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I couldn't even talk about them. I couldn't even write them, and I bailed on it. I said, this doesn't need an illustration.
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All of you have your things. All of you have those things that entice and that arouse your passions, that draw you in.
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You don't need to be ignited with the words or with the thoughts. Ephesians 5, 16 says this.
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There are some things that we ought not to even talk about, says the Apostle Paul. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that the world does in secret.
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And how many of you know they're doing it less and less in secret? It's coming out. Thank you, internet. So the law does what it was designed to do well.
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It exposes our sinful hearts. It shows us who we really are and how incapable we are of pleasing
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God in our flesh, in ourselves, in our own strength, and in this sense, the law is, hear me carefully, church, the law is part of the fall.
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In the overarching plot line of scripture that goes creation, God created it good. Fall, we broke it.
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Redemption, he is buying us back and winning it back to him so that he can usher in a restoration, the final movement.
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Scripture has a plot. That's the plot, creation, fall, redemption, restoration.
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That's where it's all driving. In all of the things, all of the elements of scripture, you can place a theological concept or any kind of concept in that.
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So where does the law fit into the history of God? Where does it fit into the plot line? And I would suggest to you that if you put the law, where you put the law matters immensely.
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If you put it in redemption, then you are thinking that the law has something to do with your salvation.
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The law is the last, I would say, it's like the last movement of the fall, assuring, assuring and sealing us all in the knowledge that we are not enough, that we are worthy of condemnation and we cannot save ourselves, so that it prepares us for the redemption that will be provided in Christ.
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That's the role of the law, is to show you you cannot do it on your own.
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You see, the law cannot solve anything. It can only diagnose our hearts as desperately wicked and unable to remedy our separation from our
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Heavenly Father. Without the law, without the law, we would still be fallen, right?
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And after the law was given, we were still fallen, right? The law didn't solve it.
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The law didn't fix it. We needed a Redeemer to come to fulfill the law on our behalf. The law didn't redeem anything.
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It only opens our eyes to our depravity. And for some, it even further entices us to a desperate competition with others, to try to work for God's favor, to try to be better than others around us, or as was mentioned earlier in the text, it entices us to an unholy curiosity.
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And further, I would suggest to you that the law brings with it fear. How many of you have lived under a season of law?
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You've at least, I mean, you'd raise your hand and you'd say, I've lived that way. I've been enslaved to law before.
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Was fear a part of that? Of course it was. Fear, have
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I done enough? Am I good enough? Where's the standard? Where's the line? Have I crossed that line? What if I die and I've sinned and I'm not good enough?
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And there's a fear that's genuinely associated with it. And then that fear breeds desperation, right?
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Just desperately clinging to whatever I might, well, at least I'm better than that person. At least I'm better than this person. I'm ticking it off like I'm running a race and I'm just hoping
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I can start picking people off left and right, start beating them so that I look better.
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It brings desperation. The law inflames sinful passions and it does not bring the fruit of the
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Spirit like union with Christ as the text says. The law instead bears fruit for death.
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Not fruit like the Spirit, not love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control. No, no, no, it brings a fruit, death.
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And by the way, when we read death, when you read the wages of sin is death, don't think that it's just like, oh yeah, croak,
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I die. But it brings death of relationships. It brings death of good things. It brings desolation in its wake.
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Some of you know what I'm talking about. You've actually been caught in a lie or you've lied or you've done something that's desperately wicked and your life begins to look like that desert place.
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It begins to dry up and no matter what, without dealing with that sin, you just find things shriveling.
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You find things dying around you. Do you know what I'm talking about? I think all of us have experienced that.
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The law bears fruit for death. It destroys relationships. It destroys good things.
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It destroys our joy. It destroys our love. It destroys every capacity that we have to image
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God. There are many religious people who are trying to obey the law, but the scriptures here explain that the direction, the trend of a law -based life is toward that desolation of death.
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But now, in verse six, but now we are released from the law.
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All who are in Christ have been released from the law. It has been well established that the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our
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Lord. We have been made acceptable to God by faith in the sacrifice of his Son. We are now free from enslavement to sin, and we are truly free from enslavement to the law.
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The law once held us captive, and that's a strong term, held captive, but it shows the dangerous place that we stand when we have the mental attitude that we remain under the law.
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So let's be authentic here for a moment. How many of you can keep the entire law? How many of you have tried?
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Didn't go very well, did it? Then what point would there be in acting like you are keeping the entire law?
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What point would there be even in pretending? That'd be foolish, right? Further, let me just ask you another question.
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How many of you think that if you all, if everybody in this room starts a marathon and none of us finish, should the one who made it the furthest get the medal?
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Think that through. Of course not. That's preposterous. If nobody finishes the race, no one gets the medal, right?
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But that's the mindset that we have towards God when it comes to the law. Well, at least
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I'm better than everybody else. Well, none of us have gone the distance. None of us deserve it. But hear me carefully, church, there is one who went the distance for you.
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And his name is Jesus Christ. He went the distance for us. He kept every nuance of the law for you.
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And further, in the race, we have this opportunity to race and to run with joy and delight now.
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Now some of you, the idea of running with delight and joy is, that's a, my illustration's a bit of a stretch.
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But hear this, for those of you who are kind of, I've lost you because you're going delight, joy, running, don't go in the same sentence, hear me carefully.
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If you're one of these who along the race is just kind of, you're stuck, you're not moving anymore, do you know what
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Jesus does for all of us? Because all of us get there in this race. He comes back, picks you up, puts you on his shoulders, and carries you to the finish line.
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That is our savior. That is what he has done for you regarding the law. How free are you from the law?
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Completely free, because who kept the law for you? Jesus. He did it for you.
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And so that is what law keeping looks like. Christ keeping the law for you.
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He comes back for anyone who would receive him, puts us on his back, and carries us to the finish line.
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At the end of verse six, we see that we are not, that we are now serving in the new way of the spirit.
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So there's a little bit more here that's missing, because you're still kind of, some of you are going, wow, this is exciting, we're free from the law, what's next?
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Like, what do I do now, right? I mean, I'm free from, you know, free from laws like thou shalt not commit murder.
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Are you free from that one? Free from thou shalt not commit adultery? Free from the law against lying?
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Free from the 10 commandments? Are we free from everything? And hear me carefully, I believe you are. As far as duty,
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I believe you are, but now the question becomes in the spirit, what do you wanna do? What do you wanna do in honor of the one who died for you?
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You see, it's from the heart, not from duty any longer. You're not bound to those laws anymore. You're free.
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Now what do you wanna do? The question is up to you. What does it mean?
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Well, Jesus took it in his Sermon on the Mount, and he took it up a notch. He said, you know, if you're concerned for the law, then you're gonna ask, you're gonna talk about avoiding murder.
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Well, my spirit in you doesn't want you to think in terms of avoiding murder. My spirit wants you to think in terms of loving your enemies, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving your
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God. Do you hear the difference? If we're strictly concerned, and some of us have been there.
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As a kid, how many of you were like, I wanna push the line, I wanna know where the boundary is, and then you're gonna park right there.
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And occasionally, when mom's not looking, jump over, right? But you know what I'm talking about. So it's, the law, when you're living by law, you know it.
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You know it in here because you're constantly asking, can I do this, can I get away with that? When you're living by love, you say, what pleases you?
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What can I do to bring a smile to God's face today? I wanna live a life of love. So that it means not only avoiding murder, but loving others.
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It means not only avoiding adultery, but avoiding lust for one that is not your spouse. It means that you no longer need an oath to assure your word.
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You no longer need to swear on the Bible that you're gonna show up at a certain time for a meeting, because your yes is your yes, and your no is no.
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The spirit goes beyond the written law to a deeper spirit of the law.
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So that we are no longer looking to figure out what we can get away with, but we are looking to figure out how we can love
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God and others better. The confusing thing, of course, in application in this, is that the results look the same.
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Whichever way you're living right now, living under law or living under grace, it often looks quite similar.
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Obedience to God by the spirit can be mistaken for law -keeping, and law -keeping can be mistaken for living by the spirit.
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In other words, as I observe your life, I cannot readily discern if you're still under law and just trying to obey by the written code, or if you're genuinely saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, and you are now serving in the new way of the spirit.
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Because the difference between these two ways of life is found in the heart. It's found in what's motivating you.
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It's found in answering the question, what and who am I living for? Are you dead to the power of the law?
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Are you now dead to sin and alive to God in Christ? Reflecting back on last week at the end of chapter six, are you obedient to the spirit from a heart that loves him?
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Or are you obedient from a sense of duty? Is his spirit in your heart bringing with him a desire to please him?
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Are you trying to earn a wage? Or are you living a life of joy, gladness, and love for God?
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You're released from the law, recast. If you're in Christ, you are released from the law so that now you belong to another.
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You've died to the law through the body of Christ, and you now belong to him who was raised from the dead on your behalf.
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For those in Christ, the application this morning for you is pretty straightforward.
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Simply believe and trust that you are no longer a slave to the law. Relish and delight in the freedom to love
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God and to love others. For those of you who have not yet placed your faith in Christ, your application is to consider which better describes your life, slave to sin or slave to law?
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And then repent of your own sin and ask Jesus Christ to save you so that you can be released from slavery to sin and slavery to law.
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We come to communion this morning to remember his body broken for us, to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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We take a cracker and juice as symbols of a deep and very serious reality. Our sins and our failed attempts at law keeping needed a sacrifice.
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And Jesus willingly became that holy and perfect sacrifice for us. He fulfilled the law that we could not so that in his body our sins were completely and totally punished.
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So how free are you, Recast? If you're in Christ, you're radically free.
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Crazy free. Free from slavery to sin, free from slavery to death, and free from the constraints of religious obedience to the law.
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And you are now free to obey the Spirit. From the heart. We can bear fruit for God because we are now set free to love because he first loved us.
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So Recast, let's launch out from here into this next week with hearts overflowing with his love so that we also can bear fruit for God.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have in Christ, for the freedom that we've been granted, that he indeed, on our behalf, kept the entire law.
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He's the only one who went the distance. He's the only one who went all the way in terms of your law, and in that sense, he's the only one who has pleased you.
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But yet you say that our faith in him places us in a position where you can be pleased and dance over our lives with joy.
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If we would seek union with Christ, come together with him in a way that we accept his sacrifice on our behalf.
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Father, if there's anybody here who has not seen that great exchange, their sins, their crud, their lack of ability to keep the law in exchange for Christ, his law -keeping, his faithfulness, his sacrifice, his taking our punishment toward you on our behalf.
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Father, I pray that you would allow today to be a day of salvation for anyone here who is a slave to the law or is a slave to sin.
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And then, Father, for those of us that are here that have seen that exchange in our lives, Father, I pray that you would press us more and more into love with you, more and more into a relationship that is not going back to those old forms of duty and heeding our old master sin, but instead, we would be more and more in love with you with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we would love our neighbor as ourselves because of your spirit that now lives within us.