The Two Laws, Part 2 – The Law of the Spirit

The Two Laws – Which One Are You Living By?

PART 2

God has always given us a choice, to either live by His grace and power, or to attempt to live apart from Him and fill our own needs according to our own decisions and by our own power.  Those who have the Spirit in them have the ability to live by God’s grace and are held accountable to the Law of the Spirit. However, those without the Spirit in them can only live by their own futile attempts to obey some set of laws (created by either man or God) and are therefore held accountable to perfectly obey the Law of Works. The problem occurs when people who should be living by God’s power try to live by their own power.

What happens when people sin who have the Spirit of God living in them?

How does God treat their sin?

What does it mean to love God in your heart but give in to sinful actions?

Recap:

Romans 1:

Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from[c] faith for his name’s sake.

  • First, our entire purpose in life is continuing in faith in (entrusting our entire life to) God’s care of us.

Romans 1:16 – For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

The verb “believe” in that sentence means “keeps on believing”, which indicates it is an active faith that remains sustained. This trusting faith comes from holding to the mental belief He is good, loves us, and not only can but actually wants to take care of you.

Hebrews 11: 6 says “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

  • That trust in God results in 4 things:
  1. God legally declares us “righteous”, or right with Him. Regardless of what we physically do in our body and think in our heads, He still declares us legally right because of our faith in Him.
  2. Our spirit, which was dead, is given life, and can now continually communicate with God’s Spirit. We can now hear what God instructs us to do without looking at a book or asking others questions.
  3. God sends His Holy Spirit to live within us, which means we now have God’s grace (His enabling power that allows us to respond to Him). Without His grace, it is impossible for us to act as God would act, in a godly, or god-like manner.
  4. We are no longer held accountable to the Law of Works where every misstep is held against us and brings us eternal death. Now we live by the new way of the Spirit, which not only brings us eternal life, but also enables us to stay in communion with God and obey God by His own power.

Those who do not have the Spirit of God living in them have no choice but to live by laws, and be held accountable to obey every one of those laws.  Religious people try to obey God’s laws, and non-religious people attempt to obey their own written code or their conscious perfectly. In either case, their only option is to listen to and rely upon their own thoughts and the cravings of their body to make decisions and follow-through with actions. They are attempting to overcome (perhaps “transcend,” in certain cases) their fallenness by their own abilities, spiritual prowess, and strength without the help of the Spirit and the cross of Christ.   Let’s call that the “flesh-only life.”

If we have God’s power within us, why don’t we always obey?

Romans 6:11 says, “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

That word is the same word for “reckon” – you are not dead, but you need to consider your flesh as if it was dead.  When we were born again, our old “flesh-only” life died – our habit of only responding by the dictates of our flesh. Now the Holy Spirit of God living within us communicates with our re-born spirit, telling us the right thing to do, and also empowering us with the ability to do the right thing.  However, we must still CHOOSE to do what the Spirit is instructing and empowering us to do. We have the option to ignore the Spirit and still do what our selfish, lusting flesh and carnal mind demand instead.

7:1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for deathBut now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”[b] But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for (judgment against) those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death.

So we have a new desire to love God and please God because of our born-again spirit, but we fight a continual war against our un-regenerated body, and against the parts of our mind that still think like we used to think. The Matthew Henry Commentary suggests a reason for this ongoing conflict: “[This battle] is suffered, that Christians might constantly feel, and understand thoroughly, the wretched state from which Divine grace saves them; might be kept from trusting in themselves; and might ever hold all their consolation and hope, from the rich and free grace of God in Christ.”

In summation of our problem, Paul says that because we now love God and we desire to do what is right, regardless of whether or not we get it right all the time, there is now no eternal condemnation for not doing everything perfectly.  This is the new law, the Law of the Spirit, or better said, the “new way” of the Spirit. We do not live by an external code of conduct, but instead, we live by God’s prompting within us.  It is a NEW covenant that was prophesied back in Jeremiah 31.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to[d] them,[e]
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

The new law is a law that remembers our sins no more.  It is a law that is not based on “tit for tat”, a keeping track of every wrong.   In other words, the Law of the Spirit “keeps no record of wrongs”. Where have we heard this phrase before?

1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The Law of the Spirit is the same as the Law of Love.  It’s amazing how everything always comes back to God’s love.

What was the purpose of the written law?  To show people how God would act in the flesh.  The first four of the 10 Commandments are about loving God, while the remaining 6 are about loving people.

What was the problem with the written law?  It required people who didn’t love God and didn’t love others to act like they were loving God and loving others. The epic failure of the law is that it only tells you how you SHOULD be acting without empowering you to actually act that way.

What was the solution to the problem of the written law?  Out of love for us, God sent His Son to pay for all of our sins, and then sent God’s Holy Spirit to live within us and empower us to love God and love others. Loving God and loving others fulfills the law completely. Therefore, the external laws were no longer necessary because, as Jeremiah says, He wrote his law in our minds and wrote it on our hearts when God made this new covenant with us.  Those laws in our hearts and minds prove that we belong to God and have the Spirit living in us.  So we never have to fear eternal condemnation.

In the rest of Romans 8, Paul describes the difference between people without the Spirit and people with the Spirit.

Romans 8:Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life[d] because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of[e] his Spirit who lives in you.

12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Simply put, if you respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit instead of the cravings of the flesh, you will act in loving, godlike ways instead of lustful, selfish ways. You will starve the flesh’s cravings, and in effect, put them to death by acting according to the Spirit. However, the opposite is also true.  If you starve your Spirit by cutting off communication with God through prayer, worship, the Word and fellowship with His people, the flesh will have more control over you, and you will not walk in the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

NOTE: Is it any wonder that so many Christians today are shallow, lethargic, and disillusioned with their experience of the spiritual life? Since they spend so little time reading Scripture or listening and meditating on good teaching, they are unacquainted with these truths; they try to live the Christian life by instinct alone—not a good plan, and one that puts them practically in not much better stead than an unbeliever. Such a posture either degenerates into emotionalism with no solid ethic or into hardness of heart, with little love for God and fellow man. (Greg Herrick)

It may be asked, whether one that has received the grace of God in truth, can live after the flesh; flesh, or corrupt nature, though still in such a person, does not have dominion over him: to live in sin, or in a continued course of sinning, is contrary to the grace of God; but flesh may prevail and greatly influence the life and conversation, for a while;… but certain it is, that it shall not be always thus with him. (John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible)

Matthew Henry’s Commentary says that your outward actions show whether or not you have the Spirit in you (they aren’t the cause of whether or not the Spirit lives in you), regardless of what you profess. But for people with God’s Spirit in them, “Though we may now seem to be losers for Christ, we shall not, we cannot, be losers by him in the end.”

Our only hope for acting righteously is God first telling us what to do and secondly empowering us through His Spirit to do what He instructs. Still we must CHOOSE to use His power to obey the Spirit’s instructions – we can always go back and obey the ever-present cravings of the flesh, or the satanic lie that we don’t need God to conquer the situation. The moment we think we can do it without Him, or go back to trying to obey the rules and regulations in our own power, we have fallen from grace and landed back in sin.  We are no longer counting ourselves as dead to sin.

Now that we understand that we have been “stamped” righteous, gifted with God’s Spirit and laws within us, and empowered to respond and obey to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, what is our next move?

Romans 12:1 – Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

When we come to Christ, we have “flesh-only” mentalities and habits.  Just because our spirit is born-again and the Holy Spirit comes to live within us doesn’t mean all of those mindsets and habitual behaviors will immediately disappear.  Our salvation experience is the beginning of our being made into the image of Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[i] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Every act of obedience to the Holy Spirit transforms our mind, which changes our actions.  If we take a step of faith and trust God to do what He says, and we see how He comes through for us, our faith is strengthened, and we are more willing to trust Him the next time He speaks. We will be better able to recognize the Holy Spirit’s prompting and know what God’s will is for us.  But every time we choose to do things our own way, we actually reinforce our original faith-less, selfish stinking-thinking. We lose the ability to hear God and pick out His will for us.

So the bottom line for those of us who are born-again and indwelled by His Holy Spirit is that we no longer have to perfectly obey a list of rules and regulations. Instead, we are called to listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and obey Him by His own power within us. Since there is no list of regulations for us to break, God no longer keeps a record of our wrongs.  We don’t obey Him out of fear or punishment – we obey because we now love God and have a desire to please Him. Our bodies and cravings may cause us to choose to disobey God’s promptings, but because we have been stamped “righteous” because we have placed our faith in Him, we will not face eternal damnation, but will enjoy eternal life. How much of that eternal life and power we enjoy on this earth is directly proportional to how much we “feed” our own spirit within us, and by how much we obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit.