Romans Part 3 - LIFEಮಾದರಿ

Free from the Law

The Bible talks about humanity living under the law, about how before we believed in Jesus and what he did for us, we were under the controlling passions of a corrupt nature (Rom. 8:5). The law is there for a reason, though, and one of the things it does is show us how we were not living as God wanted us to live. Too often the sinful desires and motives the law revealed to us, we let produce in and through us the wrong kinds of habits and behavior. The law condemned us by showing us where we were guilty of breaking God’s laws. Heavy information.

However, (finally some good news), if we believe what Jesus Christ did for us by taking our sins on himself and dying on the cross to redeem us from those sins, then the Bible tells us that we are not bound by that guilt the law lays on us (Rom 8:1-2). We have been released, so to speak, from being under its thumb.

Many years ago, I once worked for a Supervisor who (it seemed to me) constantly watched over my shoulder at everything I did. I realize that the rules we followed and the ways the job requirements were expected to be accomplished were important and were there for a reason, but I dreaded going to work, feeling that he was just looking for something to criticize me. One day, that Supervisor was replaced by another who concentrated less on what I might do wrong and more on how we could work together to get the job done. What a sense of relief and freedom that was!

We, as Christians, still need to follow the law, but Christ has freed us from the bondage to that master so that we could be bound to another: Jesus, the one who has redeemed us, and from this will come good fruit (Gal. 5:22) and a life consecrated to God. Ironically, by accepting God’s gift of salvation by what Jesus did for us, and by willingly accepting to be bound to Christ, we end up being more free then we could have ever imagined.

-Ken Tharp