Have You Been Set Free From Prison?

Have You Been Set Free From Prison?

Imagine You have been set free from prison after many years locked in a prison cell. No more chains, no gates barring their way, just freedom!

Have you been set free from the bondage of the law by faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ fulfilling the law on your behalf?

The moral law fulfilled by His perfect life, and the ceremonial law fulfilled by His death, ushering in the new covenant.

Jesus now being our great High Priest, seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, pleading His own, perfect righteousness on behalf of all who trust in Him.

Now imagine that prisoner being let out of prison and then choosing to go back in and be chained again! 

Ridiculous? Yes indeed. 

But are we living as one set free or have we chained ourselves again to the law or to sin?

The law could not save us because we could not keep it perfectly. But ‘what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:’

Why?

‘That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’

We are freed from both the guilt and the power of sin. Yes we may still sin but sin no longer has any power over our lives.

Jesus’ righteousness has become ours. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled ‘in’ us by Christ. 

Not ‘by’ us, not by our imperfect attempts to keep the law but ‘in’ us by the righteousness of Christ being imputed to us by faith.

If we now strive to keep the law in our own strength, we put our chains back on. 

It’s through faith in Christ’s righteousness that we fulfil the law of Christ. And by leaning into the power of the Spirit within that we’re kept from sinning.

‘A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ,’

‘Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die. But if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’

Is righteousness in Christ and freedom from the law then license to sin? 

Never! 

We mortify the deeds of the body, not by striving to keep the law by our own attempts at righteousness but by the power of the Holy Spirit. By listening to His voice, listening as He speaks to us through reading God’s word. Also through the preaching of God’s word and as He speaks through our conscience. Then walking in obedience to His voice.

Yes sin will still be present in our flesh. But by leaning into the fullness of the Holy Spirit, who is in us in us, we have the power to resist and walk in obedience.

How do we know if we’re walking after the Spirit or the flesh?

Where is our mind? Where are our thoughts and desires?

‘For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.’

‘Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?’

Let’s not put our chains on again Friends by striving to keep the law.  Neither put them on again by living for the flesh. But rather seek to live by God’s grace, through the working and power of the Spirit within.

‘For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God. For if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.’

It’s leaning into Christ in us, by His Spirit, that His love might flow through us.

‘No more me just all Christ in me.’

Rom 8, Gal 2:19-21, Gal 3:2-3.

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