“Indeed, what the law was unable to do, because it was weakened by the flesh, God did, when He sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin. God condemned sin in His flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law would be fully satisfied in us who are not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”—Romans 8:3-4
God’s law is holy, but it cannot make one holy. Only the finished and accomplished work of the cross can make one holy. I personally believe that the curse of the law comes from trying to please God without God’s help.
Jesus came to abolish our humanly conceived program of holiness. God went straight to the point by asking us to consider ourselves dead to sin. What we can’t accomplish, because we can’t keep the law perfectly, weak as we are by our own efforts, He has accomplished by sending His Son to satisfy His demands in us. God tackled the heart of the problem by sending His own Son. He did not treat the matter of sin as something distant and insignificant. In His Son Jesus, who personally assumed the human condition by becoming like us, God entered the mess of a struggling humanity to put it right once and for all.
The code of the law, weakened as it has always been by a fractured human nature, could never have done this. The law always ended up being used as a band-aid on sin instead of healing it in depth. And now, what the code of the law demanded but we couldn’t provide, is accomplished when, instead of redoubling our efforts, we simply welcome what the Spirit is doing in us.
“Indeed, what the law was unable to do, because it was weakened by the flesh, God did, when He sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin. God condemned sin in His flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law would be fully satisfied in us who are not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:3-4
Today, many Christian and even secular sources proclaim that humanity’s number-one enemy is the ego or “self”. If you don’t control it properly, it will act against your relationships, your family, your boss, your company, your position – and eventually betray you. The Gospel, however, is not about improving the self, the ego. Here is the quintessence of the Gospel: “Not I, but Christ”.
“Indeed, through the law I died to the law that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I am now living in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:19-20)
None of us can free ourselves from this old identity; only Jesus can. He came to crucify the “self” on the cross and destroy the lie of an independent existence (ego) that the devil and the world’s system use to enslave us.
“Here is the quintessence of the Gospel: ‘Not I, but Christ’.”
This is why it is essential never to reduce or lose sight of the magnitude of what Christ, our Redeemer, accomplished on the cross. His sacrifice didn’t just forgive our sins and guarantee us access to paradise. No, no, no: he makes us brand-new! If we believed that Jesus covered our rottenness and allowed the serpent’s poison to remain in us until we finally reached heaven, we would be denying the fullness and greatness of His death and resurrection.
Adam Clarke, a brilliant eighteenth-century Wesleyan theologian, put it this way: “If we wait for our physical death to free us once and for all from the power of sin, then we have just crowned death as our savior and not the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for what You have done for me. I don’t deserve and can’t even manage to be holy on my own. That is why I now receive Your justification and forgiveness by faith. Fill me with Your Spirit and help me to experience the joy of salvation. Amen.
