There is only one way to gain victory over the struggle with sin about which we read yesterday. It is that struggle which makes us says with Paul, "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want" (see Romans 7:19). The law of our mind is insufficient in itself to overcome the law of sin that dwells within us. Paul finally revealed the answer to the struggle, saying, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Only Jesus an deliver us from slavery to sin. It is to this point that he returns in today's reading.
Brothers and sisters:
Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
If we allow ourselves to be joined to Jesus Christ in baptism and we continue to walk with him, remaining in him, and not rejecting him, there will be no condemnation for us. From this vantage point the struggle looks very different from it did when we tried to face it apart from Christ.
For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has freed you from the law of sin and death.
Without that help of Jesus we were unable to fundamentally reorient our inner lives to prioritize and desire the things of God. Motivation was mostly extrinsic, fear of punishment, and desire of reward. Our hearts themselves remained hardened with we ourselves able to do very little to bring about a change within. But the freedom Jesus came to offer delivered on the messianic promise to give us new hearts.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (see Jeremiah 31:33)
I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them (see Ezekiel 36:26-27).
These promises stand behind what Paul meant when he wrote of the "law of the spirit of life", for this is the law that Jesus writes within us, at the deepest core of our beings. United to Jesus Christ himself it is now possible "that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us". The temptation will always remain to lean back into the flesh instead forward toward the spirit, to forget about Christ within us, our hope of glory, and instead to go back to a more self-centered perspective where we do things for ourselves rather than for love and must therefore also insist that we do them by ourselves, without help. When we give in to this temptation we find ourselves back in the frustration expressed by Paul in chapter seven, feeling very much how the flesh cannot please God, how it really is concerned with and leads toward death. Hence Paul tells his readers that they must use their renewed minds to remember the truth of who they have become in Christ:
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Believers must activate their faith by believing this truth about themselves in order to bear good fruit. If we forget that we are in the Spirit it is unavoidable that we will start to live from the flesh. Yet since Paul tells us to remember it is clearly possible to forget. We must therefore accept every invitation to bring it before our minds, to meditate on it, and to treasure it in our hearts. Faith becomes saving faith when the renewal of our minds brings forth the fruit Paul calls the "obedience of faith".
We can have great confidence even though we are yet imperfect and possibly very much so, as long as we do not give up on the one who will never give up on us. Our mistakes can't bring condemnation, nor can anything we do outweigh his love for us. Provided we don't walk away, but to persevere as Jesus taught (see Matthew 24:13), we can be assured that we will receive the fulfillment of the promise.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit that dwells in you.
We are all fig trees that are meant to bear spiritual fruit for this messianic age in which we live. A litmus test of our spiritual health is weather the fruits of the Spirit are to be found in our lives. These are not in fact optional, as though we could say the Spirit was in us but somehow inert or unfruitful. If there is a lack of fruit it probably stems from a lack of faith in the reality of his presence within us. Rather than backsliding so far into the flesh that we might someday choose, God forbid, to separate ourselves entirely from life of God within us, let us put our faith to work, remembering all that we have been given, so that we might bear fruit for the Kingdom. We are not alone in this. No, we are joined to Christ at the core of our beings. Let us live relying on him completely.
‘Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future.
If not you can cut it down.’
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