dead to law

Good morning sisters and brothers,
Saturday (and yesterday in worship) we read Paul talking about the freedom from sin to belong to God. Today he talks about being free from the Law to belong to God. As a devout Jew the Law of Moses played an important role in Paul's life. As an apostle of Jesus, Paul still respects the Law. At the same time he sees its limitations clearly. When we live trying to follow a set of rules we often find ourselves resenting the limitations and thinking less about the purpose behind those rules. Paul even says that by describing and forbidding sin, the law "arouses" sin in us by making us more aware of it. A lot of people who grow up in the church would see Christianity in the same way. Many people experience a bunch of rules that arbitrarily tell us what we can't do. That's not really our calling in Christ. In our baptism into Christ we died to the Law and to sin so we can be alive and free to follow God.
blessings on your week,
Sam

Romans 7:1-6

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? 2Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.



4In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.