11-11. Nature, Not Law
“But now we are delivered from the law” (Rom. 7:6a).
The Christian life is not regulated by Moses and the Law, but lived by “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” Not rules, but nature.
“God gave His people Israel, a nation living in the world, the law; one of its purposes being to act as a curb or restraint, a kind of bit and bridle on their rebellious flesh. It had to be checked on the one hand; it had to be pushed on the other, so to speak. Thus it was that the law dealt with man’s flesh. But to go back to the law now is just the denial of Christianity.
“Some good men who in grievous error would impose the law as a rule of life for the believer mean very well by it (for they strive to be pious); but the whole principle is false. The law, instead of being a rule of life, is necessarily a rule of death to one who has a sin nature. Far from being a delivering power, it can only condemn such; far from being a means of holiness, it is, in fact, and according to Paul, the ‘strength of sin’ (1 Cor. 15:56).” -W.K.
“In man the law and the flesh always go together. The Cross was the end of both in the sight of God. The flesh was judged and condemned there; it was treated as a dead thing before God—dead and buried. And the law which deals with the flesh we are dead to.
“We have passed out of both: we are not in the flesh, and are no longer under the law. The flesh being that in us with which the law grapples, and the flesh being now by faith reckoned a dead thing, there is no more for the law to lay hold of. We pass out of its province into another country and atmosphere—’hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).”
“That we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter” (Rom. 7:6b).