What About My Sinful Nature?

The contrast between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh.

a. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death": The law of sin and death was a strong and seemingly absolute law. Every sin we commit and every cemetery we see proves it. But the law of the Spirit of life in Christ is stronger still, and the law of the Spirit frees us from the law of sin and death.    

• We are free from the law of sin: Though he inevitably does, the Christian does not have to sin, because he is freed from sin’s dominion. We are free from the law of death; death therefore no longer has any lasting power against the believer.    
• Romans 8:1 tells us we are free from the guilt of sin. Romans 8:2 tells us we are free from the power of sin.

b. "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh": The law can do many things. It can guide us, teach us, and tell us about God’s character. But the law cannot give energy to our flesh; it can give us the standard, but it can’t give us the power to please God.    

• Leon Morris, quoting T.W. Manson: “Moses’ law has right but not might; sin’s law has might but not right; the law of the Spirit has both right and might.”    
• “The law is weak to us, because we are weak to it: the sun cannot give light to blind eye, not from any impotency in itself, but merely from the incapacity of the subject it shines upon.” (Matthew Poole)

c. "In that, it was weak through the flesh": The law is weak because it speaks to our flesh. It comes to fleshly men and speaks to them as fleshly men. But the work of the Spirit transforms us by the crucifixion of the old man and it imparts the new man – a principle higher than the flesh.    

• “A vine does not produce grapes by Act of Parliament; they are the fruit of the vine’s own life; so the conduct which conforms to the standard of the Kingdom is not produced by any demand, not even God’s, but is the fruit of that divine nature which God gives as the result of what he has done in and by Christ.” (S.H. Hooke)

Based on the Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik