When we find ourselves moaning away about life, judging other people for how they dress or how they talk, or we’re worrying ourselves to death about family, health, finances and the future of the Free World – who, in actual fact, is thinking those thoughts? Paul has a shocking surprise for [...]
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Imagine discovering you’re not an independent being after all, but two beings at war with each other. It was a shocking discovery for Paul, too. Wherever he went, Romans 7:21, ”I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” There was never a [...]
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Paul talks of sin as if it’s a person. Sin is something living inside him, like a separate being. It has its own personality. It can act independently, doing whatever it pleases, and it’s very clever, as well. It can somehow twist God’s law – which is holy, righteous and good – into [...]
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Paul tells us in Romans 7:6 ”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.” Does that make the “old way” bad, then? No, its job is done, that’s all. Its job was [...]
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One minute Paul says we’re “released from the law (Romans 7:6),” but the next minute he says “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good (verse 12).” So, why would God release us from the law when it’s holy and good? Because the law “brought death (verse 10).” [...]
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Is the law done away? That’s the question. And the answer from Paul is “Yes, it is done away” – as a means of dealing with our nature, because our nature is far too powerful for any law to change it. But Paul answers “No” to that question, too. No, God’s [...]
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For those who attach great importance to God’s law and the 10 commandments it must be confusing when Paul writes “you are not under the law (Romans 6:14),” “you died to the law (Romans 7:4),” “we have been released from the law (Romans 7:6),” and “the law has authority over a man only [...]
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Is the law done away? Yes, as a means of dealing with human nature, because the lesson we learn from Israel in the Old Testament is that the law is not powerful enough to contain or control our passions. Our nature is so powerful it knocks the props right out from any law [...]
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The problem with God’s law is that, wonderful and holy though it is, it can’t do anything about our sinful nature or our sinful passions. In fact, according to Paul, the law only rouses our sinful passions, not controls them, Romans 7:5. Tell a child not to do something, for instance, and what [...]
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Isn’t it terribly risky for God to remove the law’s authority over us? No, because it frees us up to “belong to another (Romans 7:4),” and whoever this “another” is it’s obviously a whole lot better than who we belonged to before. So, who did we belong to before? To sin. [...]
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