GRACE AND GLORY - PART 16

IN THE SPIRIT

Romans 7:1–13 (NLT)

1 Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the law—don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? 2 For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. 3 So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries.

4 So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. 5 When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

7 Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” 8 But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. 9 At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, 10 and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. 11 Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me. 12 But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.

13 But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.

Once you have died to the law, it no longer applies to you. That doesn’t mean that you abandon morality; it means that the consequences of the law that you’ve already broken no longer have a legal right to keep you in prison.

It wasn’t your death that set you free from the law, though; it was Christ’s. May we never forget who did the heavy lifting here for our freedom from the power of death, the reasonable punishment for our wrongdoing.

Freedom from the law brings us into grace for good works. We are empowered to live for Him because we are no longer worried about the consequences of our former sin.

The result of living free from the law is living free in the Spirit.

Living in the Spirit means that our mindsets shift from the natural realm to the spiritual realm. We no longer see people the same way. We don’t see circumstances the same way. The spirit is eternal. The flesh is temporal.

The law has shown us how bad sin is and how good God is. It’s amazing that a perfect God would make Himself available to imperfect people. The law demonstrates how bad sin is and what its consequences fairly should be and how good God is and how great His mercy must be to reconcile sinners to Him.

That’s life in the Spirit. Choosing spiritual things over natural things. When you choose the Spirit, the law doesn’t have to be observed by the letter, because He who gave the law lives inside us and leads us to choices that bring life.

To live in the Spirit, you have to call the Spirit up from the inside. It’s not about getting answers from Heaven. It’s about summoning the Heaven that lives on the inside of you by the Holy Spirit.

Paul told the Ephesians to “be being filled” with the Holy Spirit. This means that living in the Spirit requires a daily commitment to being filled.

Being filled is a result of positioning yourself where your capacity to be filled can grow. That happens through the prioritization of the Word of God, which was inspired by the Spirit.

It also comes through speaking the language of the Spirit. Speaking in tongues by faith builds you.

Jude 20–21 (NLT)

20 But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, 21 and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love.

Ephesians 6:18 (NLT)

18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

Pray in the Spirit. When you don’t know what to pray or how to pray, He does. The key to living in the Spirit and dead to the law means choosing to let the Spirit be the leader. Being filled with the Spirit means you don’t have to stop to call Him down; you just call him up from the inside of you!

His guidance is always toward your good and His glory. The letter of the law is fulfilled. The punishment for breaking it was fulfilled by the finished work of Jesus and the Spirit who inspired the writing of the law now lives on the inside of us to give us direction.