From John Stott’s Message of Romans page 222
The moral law has not been abolished for us; it is to be fulfilled
in us. Although law-obedience is not the ground of our justification (it is in
this sense that we are ‘not under law but under grace’), it is the fruit of it
and the very meaning of sanctification. Holiness is Christlikeness, and Christlikeness
is fulfilling the righteousness of the law. . . . holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 7 insists that we cannot keep the law because of our indwelling ‘flesh’;
Romans 8:4 insists that we can and must because of the indwelling Spirit.
. . . Our freedom from
the law (proclaimed for instance in 7:4, 6 and 8:2) is not freedom to disobey
it. On the contrary the law-obedience of the people of God is so important to
God that he sent his Son to die for us and his Spirit to live in us, in order
to secure it. Holiness is the fruit of trinitarian grace, of the Father sending
his Son into the world and his Spirit into our hearts.
1 comment:
Again I am relying on help I received from my class "The Experience and Growth in Life." The first 6 verses in Romans help us understand that we are not under the law, it exists, and as you and this brother said, it has not been abolished. But, because our old man was crucified with Him (the first husband), we are not under the law. We have become Christ's wife, depending only on Him as our source. God gave us the law because we became independent, having eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The law exposes our sinful nature. So in these verses we see that our old man is buried, (the first husband), and we have another Husband, Christ Himself. This is our liberty, restoring us back to our original condition, a new status of the proper wife.
We live under a higher law, the law of the Spirit of life, who wants to fully saturate us, (Paint us over and over until we look the same as He does). This footnote is amazing: (recovery version) Romans 7:6 "discharged" - "Since the old man has been crucified, the regenerated new man is now free from the law of the old man (vv.2-3; Gal. 2:19). Since the law was given to the old husband, the old man, not to the wife, and since the old husband, the old man, died on the cross, the new man, the wife, has been discharged from his law."
As you said my dear brother, God went through a process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, to become the life-giving Spirit. As our Brother Lee has said, He is now the processed God, all-inclusive. He became finite because of His tremendous love for you and me. And, He only wants our cooperation by allowing Him to operate in us, taking us through the same process, to finally be the material that matches Him, to be joined to Him as His bride eternally. May it be so!!!
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