WE live in a free world. The space we live in is accessible to diverse dogmas, philosophies and opinions. Various ways of life and worship are there according to your discretion.
DEVOTION: Erasmus Makarimayi
There’re so many religions and cults some of them so callous masquerading as Christianity. However, Christianity is available to those who choose to hear the Gospel of Christ and receive it and believe in Jesus Christ.
There’re so many pseudo dogmas presented as Christianity and multitudes are falling into the trap. Christianity is the life of Christ in the heart of the believer.
It is the Grace of God. The Grace of God is not a theme or topic but Christ Jesus. Titus 2:11 explains, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,” Jesus Christ has appeared to you and me that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
Let’s understand now from the law and grace perspectives. Romans 7 gives us an analogy of a wife who is free to marry another man after the death of her husband.
If you’re not a Christian, you are under the condemnation of the law. Let me put it according to the Spirit of the Bible. You are either a Christian or not a Christian; you cannot be partly Christian.
You are either “dead” or “alive”; you are either “born” or “not born”. Becoming a Christian is not a gradual process; there is nothing indeterminate about it; we either are, or we are not Christian.
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However, if you put your trust in Christ, who bore the curse of the law, you are released from the law and joined to a loving husband so that you can bear fruit for God. That’s even better than the best of earthly marriages can be.
The law is not the answer to our sin problem. Trying to keep the law can never reconcile us to the holy God. We’ve all violated His law many times over.
Sometimes people want to appear holy by posting a list of God’s commandments on their living room walls even on refrigerators.
They try so frustratingly hard to keep them by their own strength. We see so much hypocrisy because of this.
This won’t work because the law just incites our sinful passions. It does not quench the desire to sin.
The oldness of the letter was a “ministry of death”. 2 Corinthians 3:6-7 record, “[6] Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. [7] But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:” Bluntly put, the law kills, the Gospel of Christ gives life.
Therefore we need a more powerful solution to the sin problem which Paul gives in Romans 7:4 & 6. It reads, “[4] Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. [6] But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”
We’re dead to the law through the body of Christ. Here, Apostle Paul draws our attention to the fact that in His human body, Jesus satisfied the demands of the law on our behalf.
He cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us. He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Colossians 2:14 aptly puts it, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;” You’re not condemned, you’re under grace.
When Jesus died to the demands of the law, we died in Him. This means that we’re free from the demands of the law as an impersonal system for approaching God. We are free from the condemnation of the law.
The power of the law to arouse our sinful desires is broken, because being joined to Christ, we now have the Holy Spirit to give us the power to obey. Having died to the law, we are now joined to Jesus Christ.
This union produces fruit for God in the Spirit. God does not free us from the law so that we can live anyhow.
According to Romans 7:4 quoted above God frees us from the law so that we might be joined to another, i.e. to Him who was raised from the dead, Jesus Christ, that we might bear fruit for God.
Romans 7:6 restates it in a slightly different way. It says that this release from the law enables us to serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
So our union with the risen Saviour through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit works in us to bear fruit for God.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you through knowledge. You’re going somewhere.
All Bible quotations are from the King James Version unless otherwise stated. Feedback: [email protected] Fellowship with Pastor Makarimayi on Facebook and on www.twitter.com/PEMAKARIMAYI. Telephone +263 712 332 632
