The Law and the Spirit

One of the great things I'm finding about reading the Bible is that it helps me deal with the craziness inherent in life. What I'm saying is, if we really walked in the true implications of its teachings, I think our lives would make a lot more sense. For example, I read this verse the other day that blew me right out of the water. I mean, I knew it was in there, but I had never really thought about it before or what it would really mean if I lived like it was true.

Side note: isn't it easy when you're reading to take in words and yet no meaning whatsoever? We have to stop doing this with the Bible. When we're young, too many of us get trained to read the Word in whole chapters, like a textbook. I say read as small a chunk as necessary so that you really wrestle with the meaning of what you read. Only after you do that will reading whole chapters make any sense! Ok... that's the end of my tangent, but unfortunately it really broke up the flow of where I was going. Here's what you should do: go back to the top and read that first paragraph again, but this time skip this whole tangential paragraph and move on to the next one when you get done.

Anyway, here's the verse: "God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross" (Colossians 2:13-14). Do you hear how radical that is? The law, that written code we could never succeed in keeping and therefore opposed us, is cancelled! Ended. Voided. Xed (bonus points if you get that reference). Nullified. Removed. And I could keep going like a thesaurus, but I don't need to because just in case any of those words aren't strong enough for you, the verse says the law is also nailed to the cross of Christ!

It's not just this one verse either. Now that I've spent some time thinking about it and searching further, this idea of the cancelled law is found throughout the New Testament. The story certainly doesn't end there, though. Let me connect some more dots in this constellation before I try to make a point from it.

So, according to this crazy verse, the law is crucified on Jesus' cross. That got me thinking, what else died on that cross? Short answer: I did. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). It kind of puts a damper on the joy that the law is dead to find out that I'm dead too. Thankfully, the story doesn't end there either.

I may be dead, but that verse does seem to give me some hope of life through Christ because Jesus didn't stay dead but rose again. The apostle Paul (who wrote all these books I'm quoting, by the way) agrees elsewhere in his writings: "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him... The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:8,10-11). So what really died?

Sin in me died, so that Christ could take its place. The NIV really mistranslates this concept as the "sinful nature" dying, but a better term is "the flesh," the part of me that is not my spirit. So really, it's just a flesh wound! (I've had worse... No you haven't! Your arm's off! ...Ahem... many apologies to anyone who hasn't seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Anyway, this idea of the crucified flesh is what's important here. Paul says later on that "if you live according to the sinful nature [flesh], you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Romans 8:13-14). The idea of us being dead, then, is so that we will be led by the Spirit.

The verse that brings this whole thing full circle is Galatians 5:18-- "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law"!! I know the actual verse ends with a period, but I couldn't resist adding some exclamation marks (notice how they're outside the quotation marks). I just can't believe how Paul makes this unbelievably radical statement so matter-of-factly. Of course the written code is cancelled! How could it not be? It's like he's saying we should already know this stuff!

And really, we should. Maybe we even do, but how many of us live like it? I think the church in general and most of us individually are pretty stuck on the law. We are very concerned with our outward appearances and doing the right things, but where is the concern for the spirit? Is there even a point to changing people's outward morality if the heart underneath remains unchanged, not under God's control?

I don't really know, and I'm not trying to suggest that sin is unimportant in light of the law being cancelled. People made that mistake in Paul's day, and they were badly missing his point. "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-- whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?" (Romans 6:15-16). The gravity and importance of sin is not just that some law says not to do it. It is serious because it enslaves us and eventually destroys us.

We are meant, though, to be slaves to righteousness. This is tough language, and I think this has a lot to do with why many Christians balk at the idea of the law being completely cancelled. We are faced with this unsettling dichotomy in Galatians 5:18. Either we are led by the Spirit, or we are under the law. There is no in-between space.

Here's where it gets tricky. Think about the difference between the law and the Spirit for a minute. The law is made of rules that apply to certain situations. If someone makes me mad, I shouldn't kill that person. Ok, got it. I'm extremely attracted to this person, but I didn't sleep with them. Check. Success, as far as the law goes. Apart from these few rules, I am free to do as I please. But being led by the Spirit is much different. He wants to lead us in ALL situations! Do whatever you do in the name of the Lord, remember? 100%. Being led by the Spirit means constantly seeking his direction and submitting to his leading in everything, even the things we would much rather control ourselves.

That, my friends, is hard. There's no getting around it. I'm terrible at it, and I assume you are too. I'm getting better I think (hope), but I still want to keep some areas of my life for myself. That's why we tend to go back to the law. We are not bound by it, but we bind ourselves to it because it seems easier. If we have a rule we can follow for difficult situations, we feel like we will be able to follow it and save ourselves. We want to earn salvation instead of just being saved. We feel like we will be able to keep the rules well enough to meet the standard. It's not true, of course, but it's what we believe. The rules seem easier than laying our lives completely at the feet of God, listening to his voice and letting him direct us in all situations.

Maybe we just misunderstand holiness. I was at my church's men's retreat recently, and we talked a lot about sexual purity. The speaker offered a lot of insight into how to live a pure life, but in my mind the single most important thing he said was that holiness is active, directional. It IS action! It's about what we do, not all the things we don't do. And how in the world do we expect to know what to do unless we let ourselves be led by the Spirit? The rules just don't provide enough guidance.

It's kind of like walking blindfold between two electrified wires. You could do your best to walk straight and wait until you get zapped to change course. That's life under the law, the wires being the rules and associated judgments. Or, you could let someone who knows how to see lead your every step, trusting that he knows the best path and won't let you stray into pain. That's what the Spirit does for us. "Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life" (Romans 6:22).

It's directional. It's all-encompassing. It's eternal life. It seems a little crazy in our human understanding, but it's so good. That's God for you :)