The Rescue

After sharing a burden with a dear friend this week, she encouraged me to read and meditate on Romans 7. I did. Then I came across the very same passage and encouragement in my devotional today. Since I'm overflowing with these thoughts, I think it is time to share!

Romans 7

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 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, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

4 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. 5 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. 6 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.

Without much thinking, we can see that the language concerning the law here is pretty radical. We are "released from the law, having died to that which held us captive." The law here sounds like an oppressive dictator. You get the feeling that you were like a Jew who narrowly escaped the clutches of Hitler and his Nazis and you were taken to a free country never to return. Or that you were a slave living in the household of a cruel master who used you and abused you, and your true love has given all that he has to bargain for your release, and put you in a white dress, and carried you away to a life of love that you didn't even have the capacity to dream of!

This concept amazes me anew every time I allow it to penetrate my stubborn mind. Think about the slave example. How would your true love, now your husband, take it if instead of basking in his love, you are constantly trying to find a way back to that slavemaster to fulfill your duties to him? That would be ridiculous! This is the point that Paul is making in Romans 7 about the law. We are FREE from it. Why do we keep returning to it only to be crushed under the weight of its condemnation? The law has absolutely no power over me and I am not bound to it. My true love came to rescue me, and I don't have to go back!

Now, if you're like me, you're getting nervous for me about now. You're wondering what grievous sin I'm going to fall into after allowing myself to think this way. Before we go down that road, let's look back at the text.

4Likewise, 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.

Even though, in our flesh, we fear that straying too far from the law and rules and boundaries will cause us to stop bearing fruit for God, Paul says that we are RELEASED from the law so that we CAN bear fruit for God! Amazing.

He goes further.

5 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.

According to verse five our sinful passions are aroused by the law and bear fruit for death! So, maybe holding ourselves under the law doesn't produce good fruit at all. If you haven't read it lately, I encourage you to read all of Romans 7, it is wonderful. Paul illustrates the vicious cycle of sin, guilt, and more sin that takes place when we focus on the law.

So, if we can't impose rules on ourselves, how can we produce fruit for God? Elyse Fitzpatrick puts it this way in Comforts from the Cross. "It is utterly impossible that my sinful heart could ever be conquered by anything but God's love and lavish grace." 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

"Thank you, Lord, for rescuing me! Thank you for riding in on your white horse and stealing me away from my oppressor, the law. Forgive me that I keep trying to go back to it to fulfill my duty when what you want from me is to see that I delight in your love. Help me to trust you, that you have prepared the good works that you want me to walk in, and you will guide me to them as I delight in You! I do not need to seek out rules to follow in order to bear fruit for Your Kingdom. Lord, you are amazing. Everything about you is so far above me and beyond my capacity to understand. Allow me to fall on your grace and just trust you. My own reasoning always leads me astray. Thank you for opening my eyes to more of your beauty today!"