Legalism and Liberty
Understanding the heart of obedience is key for stewarding our divine sonship. Our obedience to the Lord should never come from a place of fear, but love. Slaves obey out of fear, but sons obey because they love to. Under the new covenant, we do not obey God because we have to, but because we love to. This comes from having received a revelation of His love for us by the power of His Spirit. John says in his first epistle, “ We love because He first loved us.” Obedience protects the intimacy we experience with God and allows Him to access to our hearts so that He can perform a deeper and deeper work in us. Obedience is stewarding the holiness that God has already imparted to us through Jesus. Obedience to God that comes from fear is not obedience, but spiritual slavery. The sons of God are not led by fear or religious rules, but by the Spirit of God.
Romans 8:14-15 (NIV) “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship...The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
The Spirit, not the Law, leads us into the life of God. The Law initially was a system of rules and regulations given to the Hebrews through Moses so they could remain obedient to God during their wilderness wandering. At its essence, the Law is a systematic framework for human behavior that facilitates relationship with God. The Law may seek to illuminate and uphold truth, but actually hinders a direct, experiential relationship with the living God. Under the new covenant, the Spirit has become our guide, leading us into God’s freedom, purity, and truth. The Spirit leads us into the essence of God’s righteous law by facilitating constant communion with the Author of the Law.
Romans 3:21-24 (NIV) “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through the faith of Jesus Christ to all who believe...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Think of the “law” as any rules or commandments that must be followed in order to please God and maintain relationship with Him. The biggest issue with relating to God through a law-based paradigm of any sort is that sin finds its power and strength through the law. In Romans 7, Paul describes this truth by rhetorically describing a life lived under the law- life before Christ.
Romans 7:9-11 (NIV) “Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.”
Paul says that the commandments intended to bring life actually brought death. Why?
The law was originally given by God to the Hebrew people in the wilderness in order to preserve their life and keep them alive. The law illuminated sin to the people, in order that they could avoid impure behavior and preserve life. Unfortunately, in illuminating sin, the law also stimulated awareness of its existence. This is what Paul means when he describes sin working “through the commandment.” Additionally, although the law itself was “holy, righteous, and good,” it revealed the impossibility for man to stand in righteousness before God. This combination - the illumination of sin and the impossibility to ever truly achieve righteousness before God - created what Paul described as a “wretched” tension in the human who sought to please God under the law.
Romans 7:21-24 (NIV) “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!”
In this passage in Romans 7, Paul is describing life lived under the law, before the revelation of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Building upon his arguments from all the preceding chapters, Paul brings Romans to a climax in the beginning of chapter 8. These verses summarize not only the entire book of Romans, but the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Romans 8:1-2 (NIV) “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
Paul goes on to elaborate that, in Christ, the righteous requirement of the law has been met and we no longer belong to the realm of existence known as the “flesh.” Paul says, “Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.” In Paul’s writing, “flesh” refers to our humanity, in one way or another. Usually, Paul is not using this term to describe the physical body, but the perspectives and behaviors of the former age that is passing away. In the Holy Spirit, we no longer belong to the age that is passing away, but have begun to partake of the new creation order that will be fully consummated at Christ’s return. We are new creations. The old has gone; the new has come.
Religious legalism belongs to the realm of the flesh and the old age that is currently passing away. Continuing to approach the cross and life in the Spirit through a framework of rules and regulations is to oppose the message of Christ. In Christ, we have totally been set free from any obligation to the law or legalistic way of thinking. Our relationship with God now becomes facilitated by His living presence within us. As our minds are renewed, we become more and more sensitive to His presence leading us. We are propelled into an experience of the new creation.
This revelation of spiritual liberty must become more than a simple intellectual assent. Many Christian brothers and sisters can verbally express that they not under the law, yet retain the legalistic paradigms, sinful bondages, and thinking patterns that characterize life under it. Their thinking is aligned to the thinking patterns of the age before Christ. In actuality, they relate to God as slaves. They mistake the New Testament for a new law, established by Jesus and the apostles, which must be followed in order to live a true Christian life. They have not allowed a revelation of being, the identity they have inherited through Christ, to take root in their hearts. For many of these Christians, shame, pride, and guilt dominate areas of their lives because they are still striving for God’s righteous standard, rather than living in a revelation that Jesus has already restored original righteousness to humanity. These Christians will, sadly, remain trapped in a cycle of shame and performance because they believe themselves to be inherently sinful and depraved. They live at the cross, rather than from it. This is indeed a “wretched” existence!
In the Holy Spirit, our relationship with God is no longer defined on the basis of performance and what we do, but on who we are. We have become spiritually united with Christ in His resurrection - our spiritual resurrection has already happened! One day, we will join Him in His physical resurrection. Divine sonship is an invitation to intimacy with God and an exploration of the riches of His glorious inheritance. It is not a call to obey rules that are falsely believed to bring men closer to God or make them more like Him. God does not desire slavish obedience, but friendship.
John 15:15 (NIV) “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
It is important to realize that this revelation does not free us from the responsibility to steward our freedom. Sin still exists as a force in the world, and Christians are susceptible. However, we do not have a “sin nature.” It was taken to the cross and put to death through the body of Jesus Christ. We now live in His righteousness, faith, and freedom because we have been united with Him in the Holy Spirit.
