(Audio)
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
The law doesn't change in the moral content it contains. That does not pass away. Yet of itself, "the letter brings death". It makes us know our sins but has no power to help us overcome them. It is a tutor showing us our need for a savior (see Galatians 4). It does help the world keep the external form of law and therefore helps keep it from falling apart. But hearts are never healed with the letter of the law. Hearts need the healing rays of the Holy Spirit.
for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.
The Spirit marks this new covenant established by Jesus. He is the newness that differentiates it from the old. And in this sense the old does pass away. It can no longer be merely a system of rules that we maintain through human efforts, though they be Herculean. Trying to fix our problems through greater adherence is just the wrong place to start.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Jesus makes possible a new and Spirit-filled way of life. In it we no longer need obey merely out of slavish fear. The Spirit sets us free and enables us to live in a way that does not transgress any laws almost as though we weren't even trying.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh (see Galatians 5:13).
There is a new "want to" available to us in place of the old "have to" but we must avail ourselves of it. We must walk by the Spirit, standing fast in the liberty Christ gave us in order to move more and more from a the old motivations which cannot perfect us to complete dependence on the grace God is giving us now in the moment through the Holy Spirit.
Extol the LORD, our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for holy is the LORD, our God.
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