The Law of the Spirit

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4). 

The law doesn't save.

The law explains that we are condemned for not living up to God’s standards of perfection. The law has no mechanism to save anyone who is condemned by the law. The only way to be saved from the law is for someone outside of the law and above it to exonerate those who are guilty under the law. If we are “let off” of our punishment because we are no in fact guilty or there was a flaw in our conviction, then the law itself would be unjust. In such case, God would have to declare that He created a bad set of laws to justify us by removing the law. The law of sin and death is weak in that it can only condemn, but the law of the Spirit of life gives us the ability to walk in the Spirit because the sentencing of the first law has already been satisfied by Christ Jesus, if we are found in Him. 

Sin doesn't care who is it's slave.

“Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” (John 8:34). Sin desires for us to be its slave. Sin doesn’t have a preference on whose life it destroys as long as it gets to destroy life. Sin is like a crouching lion ready to destroy anyone who is caught unaware, so we must be prepared with sin pepper spray and anything else we need to make sin turn away from us because we are willing to fight against it. Sin is an opportunistic predator and will attack those who fail to put up a resistance against it. We can dondition ourselves to withstand sin or we can condition ourserves to become a slave to sin. The little temptations to compromise will lead to the egregious sins we never thought we would be tempted to commit. Satan doesn’t care how we get to a place that accepts sin as normal—whether by slow conditioning or by unabashed actions. He will go to any means necessary to make us his slave so that we are not free to serve the Lord, but we mustn’t let him destroy the good has for us to walk in.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Our habits are formed by the little actions we make day after day. We don’t choose our habits, they form out of the decisions we make. Sinful choices or righteous living can become habits that shape our life before we are aware of it. The little choices we think are inconsequential become the habits that run our life. We can make a habit of living by the law of the flesh—sin and death—or we can make a habit of living by the law of the Spirit—surrendering to the Holy Spirit. The law of the flesh tells us that if we try hard enough, we can force ourselves into sanctification, but the law of the Spirit tells us that we obtain righteousness by submitting to the Holy Spirit and letting Him empower us to turn away from sin. Our habits are not things we can directly change, but are things that grow and change as a result of our actions. Likewise, our inward parts are not things we can search out to change on our own; we have to invite the Holy Spirit to search us and lead us in the way everlasting (Psalm 139).