Living to love by the Spirit of God

Romans 7:6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. Yes! Now that we have died with Christ, God released us from the Law. The tense of the verb “release” makes it clear that the action happened to us in the past at a specific point in time. The very moment Jesus breathed His last breath on the cross and gave up His spirit, we were released from the Law. Up until that point in time, every human being was bound to all of the requirements of the Law. When we were born into this world, we didn’t know that we had been released from the Law. The Jew was born into this world under the Law and they were taught that they were bound to live according to the letter of the Law. Such service never enabled anyone to live in freedom and bear fruit for God.  Everyone who was united to Christ, by God’s doing, at the moment of His death, was released from the Law. For all of my listeners who have believed in Jesus, that means from the time you were born, the Law had no jurisdiction over you according to God’s grace. However, you didn’t know it. So when you heard God’s Law, your conscience told you that it had a claim on you. So you felt obligated to try to obey it. You discovered that you didn’t have the ability to perform it according to the letter of the Law, and you knew you deserved to die and were spiritually dead.  Because you were united to Christ by God, He sent someone into your pathway to love you and share the gospel with you. At some point, God opened your eyes to understand God’s great gift of the righteousness of Christ to everyone who believes. At the same time, He sent the Holy Spirit to cleanse your conscience by faith as He did with the Gentiles in Acts 15:9. The word of the gospel was united with faith in your heart. Romans chapters 4-7 inform you that if God did that in your heart, then you were released from the Law the moment Jesus died on the cross. And instead of standing before God’s court of Law, guilty and condemned, you stand before Him in grace. When that realization hit you, the Holy Spirit then poured out the love of God within your heart. You knew God had loved you even when you were a sinner, and your heart was committed to righteousness by the Spirit so you could serve God in newness of life and not according to the oldness of the letter of the Law.  So be encouraged by these great gospel truths from Paul in Romans. You can serve God today by bearing fruit for Him through the power of the Holy Spirit as you live to love with Jesus. Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com